Dec 5, 2007
The Sacramento Bee ran a story recently about the comparative quality-of-life for chickens who spend life in small cages and those that have greater freedom of movement.
Free-range chickens have the opportunity to socialize, scratch and flutter about with other birds, however, the lifestyle isn't perfect. For unbiased information, reporter Jim Downing spoke with UC Davis professor Joy Mench.
"When you give a hen some of these behavioral freedoms, you increase health risks," Mench is quoted in the article.
Mench noted that Europe's continent-wide conversion to cage-free egg production has yielded thousands of pages of studies comparing the two systems. Two key results were published in the article:
- During their roughly two-year laying life, cage-free hens die at more than twice the rate of caged hens, likely the result of increased exposure to one another, and to their own manure.
- Cage-free hens suffer high rates of broken bones – 67 percent in one survey. Most modern laying hens suffer from osteoporosis, Mench said, and they're easily injured while jumping around a cage-free barn. On the other hand, she noted, workers often inadvertently break the bones of caged birds as they are removed before being euthanized.