Moving day – population of laying barn

On August 6, we completed the population of our laying hen facility, a collaborative effort between the Center for Proper Housing Poultry and Rabbits (ZTHZ) and our partner Aviforum. Populating the barn is a logistically intensive process in which pullets are transported from the rearing facility (also on site), sorted by pen assignment, and vaccinated, requiring coordinated teams from ZTHZ, Aviforum, veterinarians and student assistants. Preparations had begun weeks in advance. In addition to the standard husbandry procedures, 4500 birds were tagged with an RFID leg band, and antenna arrays were installed across all twenty pens to enable continuous, automated tracking as part of our ongoing project. Coinciding with the population, our collaborators from KU Leuven, Meng and Zhenlong, part of the Omelette project, visited the facility to deploy cameras in four of the pens for computer vision analysis. Combined with the RFID infrastructure, this dual-technology setup will allow fine-grained, longitudinal monitoring of individual hen behaviour and movement. The overarching scientific aim is to link movement patterns across the hens' productive lifetime to a suite of biological and health-related parameters, including health status, pathology, genomic profiles, and microbiome composition. The study also incorporates specialized crossbred lines supplied by associated partner Hendrix Genetics, bridging the Omelette and HenTrack projects. This integration positions the recorded behavioural and movement data as candidate phenotypes for evaluation within commercial poultry breeding programs.