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The RSPCA "Welfare standards for laying hens and pullets" indicates that the stocking rate must not exceed 1,000 birds per hectare (10 m 2 per hen) of range available and a minimum area of overhead shade/shelter of 8 m 2 per 1,000 hens must be provided. Free-range farming of egg-laying hens is increasing its share of the market.
Early experience can influence severe feather pecking in later life. [13] [20] [21] Commercial egg-laying hens have often already begun feather pecking when they are transferred to the egg laying farm from the rearing farm at approximately 16–20 weeks of age, and plumage quality can then rapidly deteriorate until peak lay at approximately 25 weeks of age.
The causes and development of vent pecking are multifarious. Risk factors that have been identified as increasing vent pecking include dim lights placed in nest boxes to encourage hens to use the boxes, the diet being changed more than three times during the egg laying period, the use of bell drinkers, and the hens beginning to lay earlier than 20 weeks of age. [2]
The great majority of laying birds used for egg production are chickens. Methods for keeping layers range from free-range systems, where the birds can roam as they will but are housed at night for their own protection, through semi-intensive systems where they are housed in barns and have perches, litter and some freedom of movement, to ...
More than 40% of the nation's roughly 300 million egg-laying hens are raised in cage-free facilities, but roughly 60% of "bird flu" cases recently detected involved cage-free farms.
Another study found that brown-egg laying hens are more likely to engage in feather pecking than white-egg laying hens. [1] The genetics of poultry will not guarantee a bird will engage in cannibalism, but the genes a bird possesses play a part in the degree of aggressiveness a bird could engage in feather pecking and increases their risk ...
In 1900, average egg production was 83 eggs per hen per year. In 2000, it was well over 300. In the United States, laying hens are butchered after their second egg laying season. In Europe, they are generally butchered after a single season. The laying period begins when the hen is about 18–20 weeks old (depending on breed and season).
Mortalities, mainly due to cannibalism, can be up to 15% in egg laying flocks housed in aviaries, [2] straw yards, [3] and free-range systems. [4] Because egg laying strains of chickens can be kept in smaller group sizes in caged systems, cannibalism is reduced [5] [6] leading to a lowered trend in mortality as compared to non-cage systems ...