Non-feed-withdrawal molting alternatives including high-fiber low-nutrition diets and lighting manipulation provide ways to extend laying cycles with substantially reduced welfare costs compared to starvation-based molting.
Non-feed-withdrawal molting alternatives demonstrate that extending laying cycle economics can be achieved without subjecting hens to starvation. Each alternative approach involves some welfare cost but substantially less than the hunger, weight loss, and immune suppression of feed withdrawal. The existence of viable alternatives has been used to justify regulatory bans on feed withdrawal in the EU and UK, and should inform similar regulatory change elsewhere. The welfare improvement per hen from adopting alternatives is significant and scales across billions of hens globally.