Environmental enrichment can improve poultry welfare and productivity by decreasing harmful behaviours, like fear or feather pecking. Having shown that chickens used an environment more when it was enriched, we then identified specific preferences in order to design more effective enrichment. First, we found that televised stimuli were attractive to chickens, that their regular presentation reduced fear, and that the images should incorporate movement, brightness, colour, and moderate complexity. Projecting them onto the walls might be a practicable strategy. Second, farmers reported that playing the radio reduced aggression, improved the birds’ health and increased productivity; this is also one of the easiest ways of enriching the farmers’ environment. Third, our findings that the presence of a familiar odourant reduced chicks’ fear of novel places, birds and food suggest that olfactory therapy could minimize certain behavioural problems. Finally, providing chickens with bunches of string promoted foraging and exploration, sustained lengthy interest, and reduced potentially injurious inter-bird pecking and feather damage in the laboratory and at a commercial farm. Clearly, extraneous stimulation is important to chickens. The provision of appropriate visual, auditory, olfactory and tactile enrichment is likely to improve their quality of life.

A reluctance to accept unfamiliar foods can damage chickens’ welfare and performance. In the present study, chicks were reared on a mash diet presented in hoppers treated with vanillin and acclimatized to a regime of brief food withdrawal and return. At 8 days of age they were presented with the same food in an unfamiliar form (crumbs) when the hoppers had been treated with either vanillin or water. The presence of the familiar odourant accelerated feeding and increased food consumption over a 30 min test. The results are discussed in terms of impaired food recognition, neophobia, and the strategic relevance of olfactory therapy.

Video images of screensavers attract domestic chicks. This study identified their attractive attributes. One focal chick in groups of three was observed for 5 min daily on 10 consecutive days from 2 days of age. Chicks spent little time in the end zones of the home box in the absence of video stimulation (Experiment 1). Videos differing in one attribute were then presented simultaneously at opposite ends of the cage. Chicks spent longer near moving than still videos (Experiment 2), bright than dull videos (Experiment 3), coloured than black-and-white videos (Experiment 4), a complex “Fish” screensaver than a simple “Square” screensaver (Experiment 5), and a more complex cartoon than the Fish screensaver (Experiment 6). Repeated exposure increased approach and preferences were strongest for complex stimuli.