Assessment of pain during locomotion and the welfare of adult male turkeys with destructive cartilege loss of the hip joint

1. An assessment was made of the potential pain and stress from musculo-skeletal disease at 54 weeks of age in large male-line turkeys fed ad libitum or on restricted amounts of food. Males from traditional turkey lines were used as a negative control. 2. Traditional turkeys were fed ad libitum and male-line turkeys were fed ad libitum or restricted to 0.5 during rearing and subsequently to 0.8 of sex-specific ad libitum-fed body weight or fed ad libitum to 18 weeks and 0.8 of ad libitum thereafter. 3. Pain was assessed at 54 weeks of age by the change in number of steps taken by turkeys with or without musculo-skeletal disease after a course of betamethasone, a steroid anti-inflammatory agent with analgesic properties. 4. The numbers of steps over 24 h were recorded using a pedometer and were similar in all 4 treatments before and after treatment with the analgesic. It was concluded that there was no evidence for pain associated with musculo-skeletal disease among the turkeys in this experiment. 5. Musculo-skeletal disease was not associated with raised heterophil-lymphocyte ratio, a recognised index of stress.