Environmental enrichment for meat chickens is an area of growing research interest, with early evidence showing meaningful welfare benefits from relatively simple interventions.
Broiler chicken enrichment research is revealing that even simple environmental additions produce measurable welfare improvements in a species traditionally considered too growth-stressed to benefit from enrichment. Perches that improve leg development, straw bales that satisfy exploratory drives, and pecking objects that reduce fearfulness all demonstrate that the broiler's welfare potential is higher than the barren commercial environment realises. The most fundamental enrichment is breed choice: slower-growing strains that physically can engage with their environment represent a welfare transformation that no supplementary object can match.