We have a small-to-medium scale poultry operation (~600 laying hens) that we have in a cageless (semi free-range) housing system here in costal West Papua Indonesia. This project is designed to provide a supplemental income for a small theological seminary here.
All the chickens / hens are of the ISA Brown hybrid variety, are about 6 months in age, and about 60% are now laying.
Here’s a brief description of our current housing setup: Our house is 8.5 meters by 15 meters that consists of a dirt floor surrounded by a semi-open wall - the bottom is concrete block (about 50cm tall) and then an additional 2 meters on top of this is wood framing closed in by chain link fence. The roof is quite high to help reduce heat stress for the birds, with the center section being clear corrugated plastic roofing material that allows the sunlight to enter to keep the floor nice and dry. The chicken house is surrounded by a substantial green buffer on all sides and a tin fence to help isolate the chickens from outside disease and distress by outside people and/or animals. We use standard manual hanging feeders and drinking waterers spread out evenly through the area. We have 4 large A-frame roosting racks distributed throughout the house. During the night, we turn on a small 40-watt equivalent lightbulbs at each outside corner of the house for security, and this does give some measure of illumination inside the house during the night.
Here is the issue we are dealing with - in the past two months, we have begun to experience smothering / piling losses where the hens will randomly decide to pile on top of one another such that the bottom ones suffocate and die. In total there have been about 6 separate ‘smothering’ events, where two to six hens have died as a result of this. Of the top of my head, I would guess we’ve lost about 20-25 hens so far. We are scratching our heads about what we can do to help eliminate or minimize these events. Considering the day and night temperatures here as well as guidelines from Hendrix Genetics company, we are quite certain that it is not an issue of the chickens being too cold such that they huddle together for warmth. We have added roosting perches in various locations around the housing system, but the events are still happening. It frequently happens at the access door to the chicken house where our workers go in and out, but it has also happened in the corners of the structure, as well as close to the laying box areas. It nearly always occurs during the night such that the dead hens are found in the morning.
Does anyone have any hands-on direct experience and advice for us? We would ideally prefer to continue using a cageless semi free-range housing system for the sake of animal wellbeing, but if we can’t figure out how to manage this, we will be forced to adopt the cage / battery system to avoid this destructive behavior.
Thank you for any input or suggestions y’all might have!
Michael
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Hi Michael,
Thank you for the good description of your setup and the issue with the birds suffocating in corners. Would you be able to send some pictures of your setup and where the problem is occurring? I am a vet at the ECHO North American RIC and can forward your email and pictures to a poultry vet here in the States. I suspect it is due to temperature fluctuations, but would like an expert to weigh in. Are the birds are otherwise healthy? Could you also send the measurements of the pens? Are the birds doing this under the security lights?
Thanks,
Julie
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Hi Julie, thanks so much for your reply. I am attaching two pictures for you below:
The majority of events have occurred right where the door opens to the house, but they have also occurred in corners as well as a couple times by the nest boxes
I wonder if you have considered fear. Can you get an inexpensive trail camera of some variety and set it up to film at night? It seems if a predator is nearby, the chickens could panic and pile up either by the door trying to get out or in a corner to get away from the perceived threat.
Hi Karen, thanks for the reply. We have a corrugated tin fence that encircles the chicken house property completely and have made an effort to prevent any other animals (especially predators such as dogs and local chicken breeds raised by others in the neighborhood that could bring in disease) from entering. Since the fence went up, we and our workers have never seen outside animals be able to get aside from common sparrow birds and the occasional rat. It is possible that something is getting inside the fenced area at night like a housecat or snake, but we have never seen them inside the fenced area at other times and we keep the grass cut low to discourage snakes nesting inside the area. Perhaps there are other predators that we are unaware of, but there have never been any signs indicating an attack with the dead hens.
Thank you for the suggestion about the cameras. We do have two security cameras setup in the house, and we will try to look through the footage to see if we can catch anything. Unfortunately, the birds do like to flock around together, where a couple birds start moving to the other side of the house, followed by others, which when enough have started moving triggers a chain reaction where many will start flapping towards where the others are. I’ve never seen ‘piling’ or ‘smothering’ happening during these events though. I also haven’t watched the security footage to see if this behavior happens throughout the night as well. Because of this, it will be difficult to discern between this and a reaction to a predator.
Thank you everyone for your help so far! Looking forward to getting this issue addressed.
Hi Michael,
I heard back from a vet who has experience in your area. They replied, "drafts or wind, especially at night, could make the chickens uncomfortable and seek a windbreak. The area by the door and the area by the laying boxes would both be areas where wind would be blocked. 2. Fear of something - this could be actual predators or could be loud unexpected noises. The barns look pretty good for terrestrial predators, but I can’t tell if the eaves at the ends of the barns are closed with wire or not. If not, eagle and/or owl predation could be an issue.
My suggestion would be to put some side curtains on that barn so that it can be closed at night to control drafting and can be opened during the day."
I still haven’t heard from two folks, so I will post their replies when they come in.
