A System for Diurnal Heart Rate Measurement in Chickens

Abstract

INTRODUCTION A VARIETY of methods have been used to measure the heart rate of chickens and commonly heart rate has been altered by the measurement process. In general birds have been placed in an unfamiliar environment either restrained or anesthetized. Time of day, comfort of the bird or activity of the investigator have often been contributing factors to the heart rate obtained. We wished to develop a system permitting the heart measurement and comparison of a large number of birds under essentially normal conditions. Such a system would allow valid comparisons of breeds, sexes and ages, any of which may react differently to handling. In this report a measurement system developed to satisfy these criteria and its application is described. APPARATUS A scanning device was developed to automatically survey the electrocardiograms (EKG) of twenty chickens each hour. The multiplexing unit scanned stations, without switching transients to the pen recorder, by…