Figure 1.
Diagram of room set up and stationary node placement.
F represents a feeder. The water line is represented by the thick solid line in the middle of the room.
Figure 2.
A laying hen wearing a wireless sensor.
The wireless sensor is packaged in a plastic case to prevent entry of dust and moisture. We mounted the sensor the on the back of the hen using a figure-eight nylon harness. Both the sensor case and the harness were colored to blend in with the hen’s feathers to avoid attracting the attention of other hens in the experimental room. This picture was taken several days after the hen was fitted with the sensor.
Figure 3.
Illustration of the polling-based time division multiple access (TDMA) protocol.
Table 1.
Ethogram of behaviors developed to identify posture, behavior and resource use.
Table 2.
Percent of time spent performing behaviors for hens at 48 and 66 weeks of age.
Figure 4.
Overall utilization distribution for hens housed within Room Y at 48 (a) and 66 (b) wk.
The utilization distribution for Room B is similar and shows a similar amount of variation among hens and across time. Room B is not pictured here due to clarity of image in black and white.
Table 3.
Hen home ranges and home range overlap at two different ages.
Table 4.
Total area (m2) of overlap between two hens at two different ages (48 and 66 wk).
Figure 5.
Hotspot maps of feeding, foraging, and preening behavior at 48 and 66
wk. The labels at the top of each panel indicate which hen is represented. The legend to the right illustrated the amount of time (high, medium, low, none) the hen spent performing feeding behavior in that area, which correspond to whether the animal was observed performing the behavior more than 75% of the time (high), 74–25% of the time (medium), less than 25% of the time, or not at all (none)”.