Providing environmental complexity — perches, objects, lighting variation, and substrate — to broiler chickens improves welfare outcomes and activity levels even within the constraints of commercial systems.
Environmental complexity for broilers addresses a genuine behavioral deprivation in standard commercial systems. Birds that would naturally range across varied terrain are instead confined to uniform floor space with no structural variation. The result is high inactivity and the welfare consequences of sustained floor contact. Simple enrichments — a bale of straw, a perch, varied lighting — break up the monotony and produce measurable increases in activity and reductions in floor contact injury. The welfare improvement is achievable within commercial housing without system redesign, making enrichment one of the most accessible incremental welfare improvements for the broiler sector.