Perch Use in Laying Hens: Welfare Benefits and Design

Perching is a fundamental behavioural need for chickens, and perch access in laying hen housing dramatically improves welfare outcomes across multiple measures.

Key Facts

Wild jungle fowl and free-ranging chickens roost on elevated perches every night — a predator avoidance behaviour
Hens with perch access show significantly lower rates of feather pecking than those without
Bone strength is dramatically improved in hens that use perches — exercise strengthens the skeleton
Perch height and diameter affect how many hens can access perches simultaneously during peak use
Keel bone fracture rates are paradoxically higher in aviary systems with perches due to collision during landing

Welfare Considerations

Perching satisfies an ancient predator-avoidance drive in hens — a bird that cannot roost off the ground at night experiences chronic anxiety driven by evolutionary memory of ground predators. Providing perches reduces ground-level crowding, improves air circulation around birds, and allows the expression of dominance hierarchy through height-based positioning. The keel bone fracture paradox — that fracture rates are higher in perch-equipped aviaries — is a design problem rather than an argument against perches: better designed landing zones, padded perches and approach platforms reduce collision rates significantly.

What You Can Do

Support egg producers using perch designs that reduce keel bone collision rates
Advocate for perch access to be mandatory in all non-cage laying hen systems
Choose eggs from systems that demonstrate monitoring of perch use and keel bone health outcomes
Support research into perch design innovations that preserve behaviour benefit while reducing injury risk
Engage with the challenge of keel bone welfare as a systems design problem, not an argument against perches