REVIEW article
Front. Ethol.
Sec. Applied Ethology and Sentience
This article is part of the Research TopicFarm Animal EthologyView all 7 articles
Targeting Frustration: A review on reducing abnormal behaviors in broiler breeders via environmental enrichment
Provisionally accepted
- 1Auburn University, Auburn, United States
- 2Institut de Recerca i Tecnologia Agroalimentaries Centre de Monells, Monells, Spain
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Broiler breeders are an essential component of broiler production, yet their welfare is compromised due to current management practices like feed restriction and housing conditions. These practices can lead to the development of abnormal behaviors, such repetitive pecking, feather licking, feather pecking, pacing, and polydipsia. Abnormal behaviors are indicative of poor welfare, and environmental enrichment is one potential strategy that can be used to reduce them. The impacts and use of environmental enrichment in broiler breeder production are an understudied field, and this review aims to identify potential environmental enrichment strategies that may mitigate abnormal behaviors in broiler breeders and highlight existing research gaps. The identified enrichments are pecking blocks, bales of substrate, perches, cover panels, and hanging pecking objects. These enrichments have been shown to address abnormal behaviors, encourage environmental complexity, and improve animal welfare. However, most of the enrichments proposed in this literature review need to be further studied to fully understand their impact on breeder behavior and welfare.
Keywords: abnormal behavior3, Broiler breeder1, cockerels6, environmental enrichment2, pullets5, welfare4
Received: 01 Oct 2025; Accepted: 05 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Quino and Baker-Cook. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Marcela Alejandra Quino
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