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

Abstract

The incidence of aggressive behaviors in mature poultry 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 aggressiveness expressed toward a female cagemate can predict aggressiveness towards other unknown conspecifics. At 4 week of age, birds were housed in 90 male-female pairs in pedigree breeding cages. Aggressive and reproductive home cage behaviors were recorded when birds were 11 to 12 week of age, during 20 min observations along 9 sampling days (180 min total). Males were classified as either frequent (F-FP), none (N-FP) or intermediate (I-FP) female peckers according to whether they respectively directed more than 5, 0 pecks, or between 1 and 5 pecks towards their female cagemate during breeding period. At 16 week of age, 15 social interactions between 1 F-FP and 1N-FP male were evaluated during 60 min in a novel environment with the audience of two unknown females (raised with an I-FP male partner) that were confined behind a wire mesh partition. Fourteen social interactions 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-FP males also performed a higher (P < 0.01) number of pecks at the unknown female audience (through the mesh partition) than their N-FP male counterparts. Findings suggest that male homecage aggressive performance towards a female cagemate partner may have predictive value about their aggressiveness towards unknown males and females in an unfamiliar environment. Interestingly, female quails that were paired with 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 males with an aggressive profile.