Can Japanese quail male aggressions toward a female cagemate predict aggressiveness toward unknown conspecifics?

PELLEGRINI, S.; MARIN, R.H.; CONDAT, L.; GUZMAN, D.A.; CALIVA, J.M.

LIVESTOCK SCIENCE

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Año: 2019 vol. 222 p. 65 - 70

1871-1413

The incidence of aggressive behaviors in mature poultry is a topic of highconcern from a welfare and economic point of view. Herein, we evaluated in Japanesequail whether the level of male aggressiveness expressed toward a female cagemate canpredict aggressiveness towards other unknown conspecifics. At 4 wk of age, birds werehoused in 90 male-female pairs in pedigree breeding cages. Aggressive andreproductive home cage behaviors were recorded when birds were 11 to 12 wk of age,during 20 min observations along 9 sampling days (180 min total). Males wereclassified as either frequent or none female peckers according to whether theyrespectively directed more than 5 or no pecks towards their female cagemate partner (F-FP and N-FP males, respectively). At 16 wk of age, 15 social interactions between 1 F-FP and 1 N-FP male were evaluated during 60 min in a novel environment with theaudience of two unknown females that were confined behind a wire mesh partition.Fourteen social interactions showed aggressive behaviors between males. A higherproportion of F-FP males (13 out of 14 times) resulted dominant of the male:maleinteraction while N-FP males resulted dominant in only 1 opportunity (P < 0.00001).During the test, F-FP males also performed a higher (P < 0.01) number of pecks at theunknown female audience (through the mesh partition) than their N-FP malecounterparts. Findings suggest that male homecage aggressive performance towards afemale cagemate partner may have predictive value about their aggressiveness towardsunknown males and females in an unfamiliar environment. Interestingly, female quailsthat were paired with F-FP males also showed an impaired (P < 0.01) plumagecondition than the females paired with N-FP males, suggesting that evaluating thefemale plumage condition we could also identify males with an aggressive profile.