Adult laying hens are increasingly housed in spatially complex systems, eg, non-cage
aviaries, where locomotion between elevated structures can be challenging for these …

Keel bone damage (KBD) is a major welfare concern for laying hens. Environmental
complexity during rearing is suggested to promote skeletal development and reduce KB …

The skeletal health of laying hens improves when birds are given opportunities to perform
load-bearing movements with elevated structures, such as perches. We investigated how …

Laying hens require well-developed cognitive spatial skills to find and retain the location of
resources in a complex housing environment. Spatial skills develop early with a sensitive …

Domestic laying hens rely primarily on their hindlimbs for terrestrial locomotion. Although
they perform flapping flight, they appear to use maximal power during descent and thus may …

Individual variation in fearfulness can be modified during ontogeny, and high levels of fear
can affect animal welfare. We asked whether early-life environmental complexity and …

The influence of loading history on in vivo strains within a given specie remains poorly
understood, and although in vivo strains have been measured at the hindlimb bones of …

The prevalence and severity of laying hen keel bone fractures (KBF) is concerning to the
poultry industry. There is a dearth of research on KBF during the end-of-lay. Little is known …

Abstract This Capstone Research review investigates how pullet-rearing practices influence
the transition to cage-free egg production systems in the United States. The hypothesis is …

Disuse osteoporosis and bone fragility in commercial egg-laying chickens is a major welfare
concern. Efforts to address this have focused on eliciting adaptations in bone mass by …