Respiratory disease is a major cause of mortality and welfare compromise in commercial poultry flocks, with ventilation management, biosecurity, and vaccination as primary prevention tools.
Respiratory disease welfare in commercial poultry encompasses both the suffering of individual birds experiencing dyspnea and the catastrophic welfare events of disease-driven mass culling. Birds with severe respiratory compromise experience the distress of hypoxia and labored breathing as primary symptoms. The connection between ventilation management and respiratory health creates a welfare-production alignment: poorly ventilated sheds with high ammonia concentrations cause respiratory disease that reduces growth rates and increases mortality - failures measurable in economic as well as welfare terms. Avian influenza culling events, where entire flocks must be killed to contain disease spread, represent the most acute welfare events in poultry production, affecting millions of birds at a time.