Research on the Behavior and Egg Fertilization Rate of Dwarf Layers and White Leghorn Chickens Fed in Floor-Rearing System

Influenced by animal welfare requirements and expensive labor cost, producers tend to feed layers in non-cage system such as floor rearing. With the development of commercial lines of dwarf layers, the property of dwarf layers＇ natural mating is drawing more and more attention. In this study, the authors hybridized Nongda Ill dwarf layers with White Leghorn chickens in floor-rearing system to research whether dwarf layers had defect in natural mating. Two steps of experiments were performed. The authors detected the fertilization rate of collected eggs, observed chickens＇ behavior in step I when a hen from other group was suddenly put into and recorded copulation number of every group in step II from 7：30 to 19：30. The results indicated that drawf cocks were as good as Leghorn cocks in natrual mating under floor-rearing system while drawf hens were better than Leghorn hens. Observation results showed no difference on reaction to intermixed hens between drawf layers and Leghorn layers. The best proportion of male to female for drawf layers was 1：8 in this experiment and dwarf cocks tended to mate dwarf hens rather than Leghorn hens.