Light promotes feed intake and also induces hormones, D3 absorption and thus possess effects on bone quality and egg quality. It will interesting to study effect of light in broilers.

I will be glad if you can study results by exposing some animals for 18 hours lightand some for 14 hour light  and some for 10 Hours light and study their total daily feed intake and cumulative feed intake and FCR.

 Dear Vijayaraghavan Gonuguntla,

the study is already finished. The broilers had lights turned on for 18 hours per day, so I can not change that. I only need to find the optimum way to analyse the recordings.

Can you please share the recordings?

Regards

VIJAY

Dear Vijayaraghavan Gonuguntla,you can find a sample of a video recording on the https://www.dropbox.com/s/4fqj5yjxe9cfsv3/M2U00078.MPG?dl=0 (the file is almost 2 GB).

I am worried by the fact that you have only one pen per treatment. Birds within a pen will generally influence each other and can thus not be considered to yield independent observations. Thus strictly spoken you have no replicates for a statistical analysis.

I am thus not sure that you should invest a lot of time (money) in analyzing the video recordings. I would probably myself consider it an indicative study and think about a new one (with replicates) to confirm the things you have observed this time.

Remember that often the best way to get the opposite result, is just to repeat the experiment. (That was the first lesson given to me by older colleagues, when I started doing poultry experiments)

Dear C.A.,

Thank you for your advice. This was basically a nutritional research, I was invited to join. I'll be smarter next time ...

So, you recommend to invest as little time as possible in the analysis. Any suggestion?

Dear Dusanka

I would like to have more information on the trial before giving any suggestions.

Things which come to mind are; were the pens in the same room and did the have the same temperature, ventilation, lighting etc? Apparently minor differences in environmental conditions can have a major impact on young animals.

Did the experiment start with day old chicks? In that case some mortality might well have occurred; this might have influenced the whole group. Also some animals might have had a much lower growth grate, possibly causing some effects. Were all animals of the same sex? If not, the numbers of male and females in each pen will probably have been different also causing an effect.

To facilitate our communication you can mail me at [email protected].

Yours

Kees kan

I agree with Dr Kan, the fact that there is only one replicat is not good for statistics you need at least 3 replicates for each treatment. 

for the experimental pens you need to adapt your pens to avoid all onstacls in front of camera (like the wood, cables ...)

if you have "money" you can make two cameras per pen, one for top view and the second one for side view.

For measurements: the pic of activity in broilers is in the first hour after switch on the light and the last hour before switch off the light. you can also select one or two hours in the mid day to have an idea about the rest period. 

as a test of nutrition you can also measure the number of feeder and water nipple visits. 

regards 

Were body weights, feed consumed  recorded each day?

Dear Hakim,

I agree about the camera position, obstacles – but with the equipment we had, that was the best we could do.

Thank you for measurement suggestion - I was thinking something similar. Do you have any experiences about the birds’ activity around feeding time? The lights turned on at 6:00, while feeding (birds were fed ad lib, but fresh feed was added daily) was at 8:00. It would probably be good to take into account also an hour after the feeding.

Dear Vijayaraghavan Gonuguntla,

No, these measurements were performed weekly.

I could not open the video.

Can you please summarize body weight gains Vs cumulative feed consumption

Regards

VIJAY

I also agree with Dr. Kan, you will not able to analyse your experiment with out having at least 3 rep. per group. Also, you should keep in mind some points that sourly will affect on broiler behavior like:

1. No. of broilers per pen: crowding will change the nature behavior of birds and intensive density will contribute to occur cannibalism and leg abnormalities, etc.

2. Light intensity: the high light intensity also will change the behavior of birds, it'll be more aggressive and the above problems will occur.

3. Disturbance: annoying and loud voices will completely change the behavior of your birds.

4. Feeding system: if feed offered to the birds automatically or manual and in each, you have to begin your experiment after the adaptation of these movements had been done by your birds.

5. Type of birds: you have to keep in mind that there are differences among poultry types, for example if you decide to repeat this experiment on quail you have to know that, disturbance will affect on it much greater than broiler.

These things which come to my mind for now, i hope that i help you a little for your upcoming experiments.

Yours

Abd El-Moneim Eid

I have never worked with chicken behavioural observation by video, but I did with lambs. I also agree with Dr. Kan. If you want a good statistical analysis you should have replicates. However, when a project has begun, and what you have is what you get to work, you can present the behavioural result with descriptive statistic (taking them with caution) accompanied with other results (productive, nutritional, physiological, etc.) to leave a base for a more specific behavioural study with a more appropiate design.

Dear Dušanka

Each treatment has only one pen, that is one replication, so this data can not statistically analyze, you need at least three replications to get reliable results for your treatment

Good Luck