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

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

LIVESTOCK SCIENCE

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2019

1871-1413

The incidence of aggressive behaviors in maturepoultry is a topic of high concern from a welfare and economic point of view.Herein, we evaluated in Japanese quail whether the level of male aggressivenessexpressed toward a female cagemate can predict aggressiveness towards other unknownconspecifics. At 4 wk of age, birds were housed in 90 male-female pairs in pedigreebreeding cages. Aggressive and reproductive home cage behaviors were recordedwhen birds were 11 to 12 wk of age, during 20 min observations along 9 samplingdays (180 min total). Males were classified as either frequent (F-FP), none (N-FP)or intermediate (I-FP) female peckers according to whether they respectivelydirected more than 5, 0 pecks, or between 1 and 5 pecks towards their femalecagemate during breeding period. At 16 wk of age, 15 social interactionsbetween 1 F-FP and 1 N-FP male were evaluated during 60 min in a novelenvironment with the audience of two unknown females (raised with an I-FP malepartner) that were confined behind a wire mesh partition. Fourteen socialinteractions showed aggressive behaviors between males. A higher proportion of F-FP males (13 out of 14 times)resulted dominant of the male:male interaction while N-FP males resulted dominant in only 1 opportunity (P < 0.00001). During the test, F-FPmales also performed a higher (P <0.01) number of pecks at the unknown female audience (through the meshpartition) than their N-FP male counterparts. Findings suggest that malehomecage aggressive performance towards a female cagemate partner may havepredictive value about their aggressiveness towards unknown males and femalesin an unfamiliar environment. Interestingly, female quails that were pairedwith F-FP males also showed an impaired (P< 0.01) plumage condition than the females paired with N-FP males,suggesting that evaluating the female plumage condition we could also identify maleswith an aggressive profile.