Laying hens have complex behavioral needs for nesting, dust bathing, foraging, and perching that conventional cages deny completely, with the cage-free transition raising important implementation welfare questions.
The cage-free transition is welfare progress, but the welfare gains it delivers depend entirely on system design and management quality. Battery cages deny hens every natural behavior that motivates them — nesting, dust bathing, foraging, wing-spreading — causing chronic frustration that manifests as stereotypic behaviors and health problems. Cage-free systems restore behavioral freedom but introduce new welfare challenges: keel bone fractures from poor perch design and collision, feather pecking in large groups without adequate enrichment, and disease transmission through shared floor litter. Well-designed cage-free and free-range systems with appropriate stocking density, enrichment, and management achieve dramatically better welfare than cage systems. Poorly managed cage-free systems can produce worse welfare than well-managed enriched cages in specific metrics. The detail of implementation matters as much as the system type.