Diluting a chicken’s diet can reduce feather pecking

New research has shown that increasing sand and fibre in poultry feed can reduce feather pecking.

According to a report by World Poultry, Doctor Marinus van Krimpen from Wageningen University in The Netherlands discovered that diluting nutrients in chicken diets means that the birds spent more time looking for food.

He found that adding sand and fibre from the beginning has a significant reduction in feather pecking.

Research highlights that wild chickens spend 60% of the time looking for food and etiologists believe that feather pecking in domesticated birds is derived from this behaviour.