Maternal food calling in domestic hens: influence of feeding context

The aim of this study was to understand the relationship between production of food calls by maternal hens and food context. In a series of experiments with broody hens, we manipulated quality of items, quantity of food, food experience and dispersion of food items. We measured the frequency of food calling during standardized tests. Our results show that all the variables tested had significant effects on food calling. These results present some similarities and some discrepancies with previous reports on food calling by cockerels. (C) 2003 Academie des sciences. Published by Editions scientifiques et medicales Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.