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Environment Enrichment Devices for Caged Laying Hens

Cooperative Extension, Highlander Hall, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521; Phone: (909) 787-4555; FAX: (909) 787-7251

G. Gvaryahu

Department of Animal Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, P. O. Box 12, Rehovot, 76-100 Israel

Correspondence: D. D. Bell

Two experiments were conducted to determine the efficacy and possible economic benefits of using environmental enrichment devices (EED) to alter the behavior of two White Leghorn strains in laying cages. The first experiment compared using EEDs with beak-trimmed (BT) and non-beak-trimmed (non-BT) birds; the second experiment compared three different cage densities with and without EEDs. The devices failed to show significant effect within experiments, but when the two experiments were combined, eliminating the non-BT and seven birds per cage treatments, a significant (P=. 013) improvement in economic returns was observed.

BT resulted in depressed performance in the early stages of production, but subsequent economic results favored the BT treatment. Egg production in the BT birds improved, and they displayed 5.2% lower feed consumption over the entire experiment. Overall profitability of the two treatments was equal, but the BT birds had a $0.13/bird higher flock index than the controls during the last 12 wk of the experiment.

Most measures of performance except egg weight and feed consumption were adversely affected by increasing the number of birds per cage. Economic returns favored five and six birds per cage over seven birds per cage.

Key Words: Beak trimming • behavior • cage density • caged layers • debeaking • environment enrichment devices

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