Research projects

Happy chicken project

The primary focus of Dr. Sirovnik is to develop methodological tools to assess the quality of life of individual animals which could be utilised for on-farm or at slaughter assessments, such as biomarkers of cumulative experience (i.e. from birth to death or current time). Possible indicators of cumulative experience include assessments of affective state using e.g. cognitive judgement bias paradigm, telomere dynamics (i.e., length change), brain plasticity indicators such as hippocampal volume, and neurogenesis. I am involved in multiple projects validating these indicators.
Happy chicken project is a four-year project aiming to validate telomere dynamics (i.e., telomere length change) as a potential indicator of cumulative experience in chickens. In this project, the role of elevated glucocorticoids – either naturally through exposure to stressors or by experimental elevation via subcutaneous corticosterone pellets – on telomere dynamics will be studied. Furthermore, the interactive effects of positive (i.e., enriched vs barren housing) and negative life experiences (i.e., exposure to stressors) on telomere dynamics will be identified. Notably, this project will correlate telomere dynamics with an affective state to validate telomere dynamics with a subjective experience. The mechanisms, such as oxidative stress, metabolic rate, and immunology, which have been suggested to mediate telomere dynamics will be investigated.

HealthyKeel project

While the chicken farming moved from cages to non-cage systems, which provide more opportunities to express species-appropriate behaviour, the housing and management conditions still need to be optimised to move commercial chicken production towards providing animals with good quality of life and sustainable farming. One of the research topics relevant to the commercial chicken production that Dr. Sirovnik is committing to is the improvement of quality of life by the reduction of keel bone damage (one of the most important welfare issues in poultry) in commercial layers and layer parents.
HealthyKeel project is a three-year project that studies the prevalence of keel bone damage in layers and layer parents and the effect of keel bone damage on the animal welfare, production and environment. Risk factors for keel bone damage that can easily be turned into solutions to reduce the prevalence of keel bone damage and improve safe navigation within the system (e.g., ramp provision for improved mobility within the system and reduced falls will be identified. As part of the HealthyKeel project an algorithm for automatic scoring of keel bone fractures will be developed. This will accelerate the diagnostics within the current project and provides a basis for a highly reliable scoring method in the future studies, improving repeatability amongst studies.
HealthyKeel project is of importance for animals (due to pain), people (producers due to reduced productivity and consumers concerned about animal welfare), and the environment to support sustainable egg farming (due to reduced feed efficiency through increased feed consumption and reduced egg production). As part of the HealthyKeel project a life cycle analysis (LCA) of Austrian commercial farms to identify the effects of keel bone fractures on the environment will be performed.

Publication record

Publication list of Dr. Sirovnik can be found here: scholar.google.com/citations