Another side of hen production that we're going to talk about is loose housed housing and that means that the birds aren't kept in cages. They are kept loose on the floor and that can apply to both barn eggs and free range eggs. Before I go into details of the two egg production methods, let me just say a little bit more about loose housed. Loose housing for hens means that they can't be stuffed to any more than nine birds per square meter. It also means that they have to have access to litter to forage and peck at. And, the legal regulations say that they must have at least one-third of the floor space as litter. But, there are two types of loose housing systems. One is a, a flat deck system and that means you would come into a shed and there would be litter on the floor and then there would just be one level that we would see in the middle where they would be provided with food, water and nest boxes. But, we're in a different type of loose housed shed today. We're in a multi-tier system and this one is two-tiers high but they can be up to four tiers high. Now, within these housing, you can have different types of egg production methods. You can have barn egg production. Which would be a house like this as I just described. Either, flat deck or multi-tier. But, with barn housing, the birds don't get access to the outdoors. Now, the sole difference with free-range is that the birds have access to the range. And, we'll go outside a little bit in this unit and see what that looks like. One other type of loose housed egg production is organic, but that has a whole another set of regulations that we're not going to discuss. Now, because we're at a free-range unit, I'm going to concentrate on what free-range egg production means. But, a lot of what I say is also applicable to barn egg production. [NOISE] There are a couple of animal welfare risks with free-range or barn housing. And, one of those in particular that's quite important is that hens in the system are more subject to keel bone fracture, as opposed to deformity, which was the more common form of keel damage in caged birds. Because these birds are moving up and down through the system, unfortunately, they're fairly clumsy fliers. And, particularly when they descend they tend to land badly sometimes and they can hit things like perches, or feed tracks and so forth. And, this tends to cause a fracture to the keel bone. Now, the hens are quite good at ascending up through the system, but we do think it's the downwards descent that tends to be the problem. Now, this is a concern, because, as any of you who have ever fractured a bone knows, that can be quite painful. And, we have some limited evidence to show that hens also find keel bone fracture painful. Another thing to consider, in all types of hen housing systems is feather pecking. Now, I mentioned earlier that the birds have access to litter in these types of systems. And, that's a good thing because it helps mitigate the chance of feather pecking developing. Feather pecking is redirected forging behavior that birds, instead of pecking at the ground, end up pecking one another. And, they pull out feathers and sometimes they can cause bleeding wounds. Sometimes, it can even lead to cannibalism. And sadly, birds that are cannibalized often die. But in a system like this, where they have litter to forage in, this helps reduce the chance of feather pecking developing, because they can scratch and peck at the litter and look for things to eat. Now, it doesn't always work. These kind of systems are set up with wood shavings, litter, or something else on the ground, but there isn't usually food in it for them to find. But, an advantage to a free-range house is that the birds can go outside, and they can look for things to forage on there. One way that we control feather pecking in laying hens is to beak trim the hens. So, I'm going to show you. [NOISE] This girl here has had her beak trimmed when she was very young, so, it does take a sharp point off of her beak. And, that doesn't stop her performing the behavior, it just means that if she does peck her pal, she's less likely to cause as much damage. [NOISE] So, other ways of controlling feather pecking include doing things like reducing the light intensity because light intensity, if it's high, stimulates activity. Other ways to try and reduce feather pecking are the type of feed that you give them. So, you want to give them food that is of fairly small particles, so that, it takes them longer to eat rather than giving them a pellet. Because if you give them a pellet, they can eat their food very quickly, but they still have this motivation to show feeding and foraging behavior. So, they ended up turning to one another to peck. Other ways to mitigate feather pecking are to put things in the house for them to peck at. So, in this shed, there are some bundles of string, which hens like to peck at. You could put it in bales of hay. You could hang things like brassicas, broccoli and cauliflower and stalks of corn for the hens to peck at, that all helps. But it's very complicated to control feather pecking. It's a very multi-factorial issue. So, one of the ways that feather pecking is controlled is by beak trimming, and this is something I mentioned earlier. And, that's where the sharp tip of the beak is removed at day old using an infrared beak trimming method. It doesn't stop the behavior totally, but it limits the damage that the hen can do to each other's feathers. So, this graph here shows you how beak trimming affects feather condition. So, where we have birds that are not beak trimmed, that's NBT. You can see that the feather damage is worse. That the score is higher, and it gets worse over the lifetime of the flock. But in hens that are beak trimmed, we find that they have less feather pecking damage, so, their feather scores are lower, which suggests they have better plumage condition. So, in free-range egg production, it's also a requirement that the hens have access to the outdoors or to range. And, European regulations say that hens should be stocked at no more than one hen per four square meters of range area. The hens access the outdoors by pop holes which are down the side of the shed, so, they can come in and out as they want. And, they're given access to the range during daylight hours only. On the range, they should also be provided with shelters. And, that's so that they can take refuge under the shelters if it starts to rain. Or, if they get a fright from a predator. Many range systems also have trees on them. And, this has been beneficial, because hens feel safer with tree cover. They're descended from the jungle fowl, so, as the name suggests they come from jungles. So, again this helps them feel safe. One of the animal welfare risks to birds that are kept in free-range systems is their exposure to pathogens. So, that includes things like parasites, bacteria and viruses. And in part, this is because wild birds flying overhead can put their droppings on the range. And so, these hens might peck at those droppings and thus ingest some kind of disease. But also, because they're pecking on the range, they can be pecking at their own droppings, and therefore, they have a greater chance of picking up a worm burden. [NOISE]
