Animal Welfare and Management in Poultry Production

Modern poultry production balances the imperative of efficient food supply with the growing societal expectation for high welfare standards. Key welfare concerns include leg health disorders, skin lesions and behavioural restrictions arising from rapid growth, high stocking densities and monotonous housing environments. Management strategies now emphasise breed selection, environmental enrichment, optimal nutrition and climate control to mitigate pain, stress and health challenges. Innovations such as barrier perches, slow-growing broiler strains and precision monitoring systems have demonstrated improvements in locomotion, airborne ammonia control and behavioural expression. At the same time, producers confront trade-offs between welfare gains and resource use, including impacts on feed conversion and greenhouse gas emissions. Globally, best-practice guidelines advocate integrated approaches that combine genetics, husbandry, housing design and data-driven health surveillance. By fostering positive affective states—through enhanced foraging, perching and social interactions—while controlling disease and environmental parameters, the industry moves towards sustainable models that protect bird wellbeing without compromising productivity.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent foundational studies have provided empirical evidence that slower-growing broiler breeds exhibit notably better health and behavioural indicators than conventional fast-growing lines, with reductions in mortality, pododermatitis and hock burn alongside increased active behaviours such as play and ground-scratching. Complementary work on bioenergetics has revealed that as broilers develop, standing becomes disproportionately costly in metabolic terms, which underpins the observed decline in locomotor activity and suggests a constrained energy budget for exercise. Together, these findings underscore the interplay between growth rate, physiology and behaviour, reinforcing the case for breeding strategies that moderate weight gain to preserve mobility and promote welfare.

Animal Welfare and Management in Poultry Production publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in animal welfare and management in poultry production across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Stocking density: number of birds per unit area in housing, influencing health and behaviour.

Slow-growing broiler: strain bred for reduced growth rates to enhance welfare outcomes.

Optical flow: computer vision measure of flock movement used to detect behavioural changes.

Precision Livestock Farming (PLF): integration of sensors and analytics for continuous welfare monitoring.

Footpad dermatitis: ulcerative lesions on the footpads arising from poor litter and hygiene, impacting bird comfort.

References

1. What is a better chicken? Exploring trade-offs between animal welfare and greenhouse gas emissions in higher-welfare broiler systems. Sustainable Production and Consumption (2025).
2. Optimizing poultry audio signal classification with deep learning and burn layer fusion. Journal of Big Data (2024).
3. Access to Barrier Perches Improves Behavior Repertoire in Broilers. PLOS ONE (2012).
4. Slow-growing broilers are healthier and express more behavioural indicators of positive welfare. Scientific Reports (2020).
5. Energy allocation and behaviour in the growing broiler chicken. Scientific Reports (2018).
6. A Systematic Review of Precision Livestock Farming in the Poultry Sector: Is Technology Focussed on Improving Bird Welfare?. Animals (2019).