Environmental enrichment for broiler chickens — perches, platforms, pecking objects, and cover — is supported by strong welfare evidence and increasingly required by higher-welfare production standards globally.
Broiler enrichment welfare is supported by consistent evidence across multiple enrichment types and study contexts. Perches and platforms serve multiple welfare functions: they allow expression of the ancestral roosting behaviour of chickens, provide an elevated resting surface away from wet litter, and enable escape from aggressive pen-mates. Activity monitoring studies show that enriched broilers spend more time standing, walking, and interacting with the environment — and less time in the low-activity states associated with welfare impairment in conventional bare environments. The enrichment provision required by the Better Chicken Commitment represents a minimum floor — maximum welfare benefit requires enrichment rotation, sufficient quantity relative to flock size, and placement that ensures access by subordinate as well as dominant birds. The most welfare-impactful single change in broiler housing is the combination of perches with litter that allows scratching, dust bathing, and foraging — behaviours that engage a substantial portion of the chicken's natural behavioural repertoire.