Dustbathing is an essential behaviour for chickens and turkeys, with its thwarting in cage and barren systems causing significant chronic welfare harm.
Dustbathing serves multiple functions: feather maintenance, ectoparasite control, and thermoregulation. The drive to dustbathe is so strong that hens deprived of substrate perform sham dustbathing on bare floors or wire, gaining no biological benefit but indicating the intensity of the motivation. In systems without litter, chronic dustbathing deprivation causes elevated stress and feather damage. Providing appropriate substrate is one of the simplest and most cost-effective welfare improvements in poultry.