Nest choice in laying hens is a very complex bahaviour and is influenced by a variety of factors like age of first access to the nest, type of nest floor covering, height of the nest from the floor ...and amount of experience with a nest. Additionally, it was found that exposing chicks to specific colours at an early age may bias the choice of nest colours later on when in lay. In the experiment reported here, we further investigate this effect. During the first 12 days of life, 216 chicks were exposed to either red or yellow and to a high or low light intensity (four treatments in total). The chice of nest colour was then tested in the age of 20-23 weeks. We randomly selected 20 hens from each treatment and tested them groups of four; each hen of a group coming from one of the four treatments. When given a chice of nests painted inthe colours yellow, red, blue and green, hens from the Bright Red treatment showed a significant preference for yellow nests. Hens from the Dim Yellow treatment showed a tendency to prefer yellow and blue nests (P=0.052). Hens from Dim red treatment and the Bright Yellow treatment did not show significant preferences for specific nest colours. In conclusion, we demonstrated that nest choice behaviour may be biased by light intensity and colour during the first 12 days of life. We propose that nest acceptance may be increased by exposing chicks to red colour with a high intensity and by painting nests yellow.
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