Aviary housing systems allow laying hens to express more natural behaviors than conventional cages but introduce new welfare challenges requiring careful management.
Aviary housing systems represent a genuine improvement over conventional battery cages in enabling key natural behaviors including perching, dustbathing, and movement. However, they introduce new welfare challenges - particularly keel bone fractures from collisions during flight within the system. Keel bone fractures cause significant pain affecting perching behavior and mobility, and prevalence rates of 50-80% indicate this is a major unresolved welfare problem in aviary housing. Feather pecking risk increases in larger groups. Smothering of young hens by piling behavior can cause mass mortality events. Well-managed aviary systems with appropriate lighting, genetics, stocking density, and management achieve better welfare outcomes than poorly managed systems, demonstrating that management quality matters as much as housing type.