Pittet, F. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1443-012X
Tyson, C.
Herrington, J. A.
Houdelier, C.
Lumineau, S.
Article History
Received: 14 February 2019
Revised: 16 July 2019
Accepted: 29 July 2019
First Online: 6 August 2019
Compliance with ethical standards
:
: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interests.
: All experiments were approved by the departmental direction of veterinary services (Ille et Vilaine, France, Permit number 005283) and were performed in accordance with the European Communities Council Directive of 24 November 1986 (86/609/EEC). Our breeding procedure and tests were approved by the regional ethics committee (agreement number: R-2011-SLU-02).A particular care was taken to ensure animal welfare in this study. Adult females were transported by car in aluminium crates (70 × 30 cm and 22 cm high), each containing six individual boxes. The temperature was 20 °C during transportation and the journey lasted 20 min. Once at the laboratory, females used as adoptive mothers are routinely housed singly (Bertin and Richard-Yris CitationRef removed; Houdelier et al. CitationRef removed) because, under natural conditions, they incubate and care for their chicks alone (Guyomarc’h and Saint-Jalme CitationRef removed). We did not provide hiding places because we needed to monitor the chicks every day without disturbing the brood. Cages were behind one-way mirrors to limit disturbance, and we checked that the females showed no stereotypies, distress calls or flight attempts, and that they carried out normal comfort behaviours such as dust bathing, which was facilitated by plastic netting covering the cage floor.We observed no cases of maternal abuse and one case of maternal induction failure resulting in the mother not warming the chicks once out of the induction box. M and NM chicks showing signs of hypothermia were all put under a heater in plastic cages (98 × 35 cm and 42 cm high) where they swiftly recovered (in less than 1 h).