Cage-free farming elevates the importance of aspects that were almost afterthoughts in a conventional house, augmenting the challenge of the transition.
Along with stronger husbandry skills, cage-free management challenges farmers to think how ventilation, lighting and litter and manure management affect the health and performance of their flocks. Removing birds from cages takes away the relatively standardized rules surrounding those three elements and challenges farmers to change their management tactics to use them to their advantage.
Ventilation becomes even more important
As far as providing an adequate air supply and temperature, the rules for ventilation have not changed in cage-free production. However, the birds are now free to move wherever they feel most comfortable – ensuring the center of heat production is always changing. Movement creates new issues, too, like controlling dust and ammonia levels and creating a consistent temperature to prevent negative behaviors.
Generally, ventilation must be consistent throughout the house. Maintaining the same airflow and temperature is important for optimal bird performance and avoiding unwanted behaviors. The experts who spoke with Egg Industry said specific ventilation needs change depending on the size of the house and the type of equipment. They recommended working with a ventilation company or other experts to establish a plan for remodeling an existing layer house or building a new one.
Ventilation and temperatures should be consistent throughout a cage-free house. This reduces dust levels, helps establish a proper litter moisture level and maintain bird health. | Austin Alonzo
The importance of consistent airflow and temperature
Patrick Stacklin, caged and cage-free layer building and equipment sales representative with poultry equipment distributor Northeast Agri Systems Inc., said avoiding hot and cold spots will keep birds from crowding into one area or another. Like in a caged house, ventilation must also keep moisture and ammonia levels low to maintain dry litter.
Potters Poultry recommended keeping an ambient temperature of about 70F. Nevertheless, air quality, it said, is more important than temperature to animal health.
“If the environment is comfortable for the stockman, then it is acceptable for the birds,” Potters said. “If the farmer is not comfortable – with eyes stinging, etc. – then the birds will be suffering. This in turn will affect mortality and performance.”
Dr. Jasper Heerkens, a poultry specialist for Jansen Poultry Equipment, said cold spots in the house lead to wet, sticky litter and create a disease risk inside the house. Air needs to flow all over, rather than being concentrated in one area of the house. If one part of the house – like the top tier – gets a colder, heavier airflow, the birds in that area will be chilled and potentially develop health problems.
Dealing with seasonal change
Dr. Anna Concollato, of FACCO’s poultry science technology department, said the rules can change with the seasons. In the summer, a heavier airflow will be needed to remove excess heat and keep litter on the floor and manure on the belts dry. In the winter, the airflow can decrease but not so much that it doesn’t remove dust, carbon dioxide and ammonia and provide fresh oxygen. She said dust can be a bigger problem in winter as well.
Salmet said the house must be as air tight as possible to avoid drafts from outside, especially during the winter in colder climates. Free-range houses have no choice but to have openings to the outside that disturb the negative pressure system and airflow in the houses. Free-range farmers need extra ventilation capacity and should consider a positive pressure ventilation system, it said.
Providing enough space
There must be enough empty space inside the house for air to flow properly. Bill Snow, Big Dutchman’s aviary system specialist for the U.S. and Canada, stressed the importance of “nothing,” or providing enough aisle space between rows of housing equipment and horizontal distance between tiers of aviary housing. Otherwise, the house cannot be properly ventilated and bird performance and welfare will suffer.
Farmers want to maximize the amount of birds inside the house, but providing empty spaces leads to improvements in lighting, litter quality, bird movement, livability and mobility for workers inside the house, Snow said.
Concollato recommended leaving about 24 inches of space between the ceiling and the top of the system to allow for optimal air circulation. Salmet said about 50 centimeters, or 19.7 inches, should separate each tier while aisles should be about 100 centimeters, or 39.4 inches, wide.
Lighting throughout the house
In a conventional system, farmers lit the house and birds lived in the level of light that permeated to their cage. In cage-free production, lighting is much more important thanks to the birds’ freedom of movement. Experts say lighting, and the intensity of light, plays a role in nixing unwanted behaviors and encouraging hens to lay eggs in nest boxes.
Lighting plays an important role in attraction and stimulating activity. Lights should be placed near drinkers and feeders to ensure hens use the equipment. Placing drinkers and feeders inside the sytem also encourages birds to leave their droppings on the manure belt. | Austin Alonzo
The experts said the following fundamental approach should be taken to maximize productivity:
- Lighting should be as uniform as possible throughout the house. Some areas must be kept brighter while others must be darker, but uniform brightness in those specific areas is important. Irregular light can lead to irregular behaviors. Excessive brightness can stimulate aggression.
- Activity areas – where feeding, drinking, scratching, dustbathing and socializing occur – should be kept brighter than areas for rest or nesting.
- Nest areas must be dark. Hens want to lay their eggs in a dark place. Conversely, areas inside the house that are not bright enough can become an attraction to lay floor eggs.
- Lights must be placed inside the system to direct birds to food and water and placed underneath the system to keep birds from laying floor eggs.
- Lights can encourage birds to move up into the higher tiers and perches of an aviary at night and descend down to nest boxes in the morning. Dimming the lights at the proper rate to create dawn and dusk lighting periods is important to this principal.
- Farmers must be careful to replace broken or non-uniform lights as soon as possible to promote consistent lighting.
Lighting to promote good behavior
As the fundamental recommendations suggest, lighting can be a powerful tool to control bird behavior. However, farmers need to remember the bird eye is different than the human eye. Concollato said a bird’s sight is more developed and sensitive than a human's, so breeder guidelines concerning lighting intensity need to be followed for the best performance.
For the same reason, Heerkens said, house lights need to be high frequency. A hen sees a low-frequency light as a flicker. A warm, white LED light with about 40 lux of intensity at the floor level is best.
Nests must be kept dark for hens to feel comfortable enough to lay in them. Heerkens said farmers need to pay attention to how much light is flowing into the nests and whether their light fixtures are placed so close to the nests that birds are discouraged from using them.
To avoid mislaid eggs, Heerkens said, farmers need to keep birds from sleeping on the floor or the lower levels of an aviary or inside the nests. House lights must be dimmable to help establish a dawn and dusk cycle for the birds. Heerkens added a dimmer is helpful when farmers are trying to figure out what level of light works best for their birds, too.
Generally, Snow said, lights should turn on quickly in the morning. At night, Frank Luttels, sales manager for Volito, said lights should be dimmed off to help move the birds off the ground and onto the perches and the higher tiers of the housing system for the night. This prevents smothering, too.
Hens feel most comfortable nesting in dark areas. Nests should be kept far away enough from light sources that hens won't be discouraged from using them. | Austin Alonzo
The role of colored and natural light
LED lighting gives farmers the option to use different colored lights, like white, blue, red or green, but are these colors useful in management?
Concollato said research shows red light has a significant influence on egg-laying performance. Red is best for accelerating sexual maturity, increasing egg production and reducing aggression. Blue light can improve growth and reduce activity levels. Green light discourages feeding but promotes exploratory activity like foraging. Potters said red bulbs work best for dusk and dawn lighting as they can attract birds into the system at night.
Conversely, Salmet said different colors are “often introduced for marketing reasons. There are no real benefits.” Providing a bright white light is important, and LED provides that at the best cost, it said. Potters said LED and florescent lights work well.
Natural light is not needed inside the house, but it is not detrimental, either. Potters said organic farmers who must have natural light inside the house need to be able to completely black out the house before illuminating it with natural light during their daily routine.
Re-learning manure management
Egg farmers have a new challenge in providing a litter area – a space on the floor for birds to scratch, forage and dustbathe – inside the house. Manure is complicated by cage-free production, too. Rather than having no choice but to use the manure belt, birds can leave droppings anywhere.
In general, the litter areas should be kept dry, friable, loose and attractive to the birds for dust bathing and scratching. However, litter cannot become an invitation to lay eggs on the floor. Placing the feeders, waterers, engagements and perches inside the system’s slats can encourage birds to use manure belts and simplify manure management.
In a cage-free system, farmers get a new challenge in litter management. Litter depth must be deep enough that birds want to use the scratch areas but shallow enough that its not so comfortable hens want to lay eggs on it. | Austin Alonzo
Essentials of litter management
Litter quality is key to bird health, the experts said. Poor-quality litter can contribute to serious problems like ammonia blindness and enteric disease. Moisture is the most important indicator of quality and it can be affected by ventilation, the season, drinkers and fecal buildup.
Quality litter, Snow said, gives the birds something to do when they are not laying, and attracts the birds to move around the house. Essentially, good litter gives the birds more places to be and increases the amount of space birds will utilize inside the house.
Luttels said new litter, made of wood shavings or sand or a similar material, should be placed ahead of every flock and not replaced during the flock’s life. If conditions are poor, Salmet said the litter can be refreshed once or twice during the cycle. More litter may need to be added periodically, Potters said, to maintain quality litter. After each flock, the litter should be removed and the barn should be sanitized.
Litter depth should fall between .5 and 2 inches, Concollato said, to avoid floor eggs. Scrapers can be deployed to keep the litter levels lower.
Keeping the litter dry
To control moisture, Potters said drinkers must be monitored to avoid excess dripping and leaking. Water pressure must be correct and the placement of drinkers must be at the right height. The air flow should stimulate dryness and keep cold spots from forming. Air-moving stir fans can help stimulate proper airflow. In winter, Concollato noted, farmers need to watch for wetter litter due to a lower ventilation rate and higher humidity.
Potters said drying agents and disinfectant powders can be spread directly onto the litter to dry out the bedding. Additional bedding material can have the same effect.
The birds themselves can promote dry, quality litter just by scratching and dustbathing. Concollato said opening the doors underneath the tiers of an aviary can allow birds to roam around and keep the litter moving and dry. Spreading whole grains in key areas of the barn can stimulate birds to peck and scratch in areas where litter is not loose enough.
Encouraging use of the manure belt
To keep birds using manure belts like they did in caged housing, farmers need to place feeders, drinkers, engagements and perches over the belts and ensure enough air flows over the belts to dry out the manure.
Salmet said light management at dusk to push birds up into the system and over the manure belts can be helpful as well. Concollato said farmers can occasionally run the feed chain for one minute in between normal feedings to stimulate birds and bring them over the belts as well.
Manure belts should be run regularly to avoid excess odor and ammonia buildup inside the house. The belts should be run at least twice a week.
Egg Industry’s cage-free management series
The U.S. egg industry is rapidly shifting to cage-free husbandry, and Egg Industry wants to help farmers gain essential bird management skills in order to ease the transition from caged to cage-free operations.
Since January, WATT Global Media has interviewed and surveyed members and allies of the global egg industry to formulate a basic set of best practices for cage-free flock management that will be published in the coming months in this magazine. This first story focuses on pullet rearing, the most important aspect of raising a successful cage-free flock.
This story was written with input from the following companies: Big Dutchman Inc., Hendrix Genetics BV, Jansen Poultry Equipment, Officine FACCO & C. Spa, Potter’s Poultry International, SALMET International GmbH, and Volito BV – now part of Chore-Time parent CTB Inc., Valco Companies Inc. and Northeast Agri Systems Inc.
Comprehensive resource for cage-free eggs available
A new collection of exclusive articles, blogs and infographics on Cage-free Eggs and Consumer Trust in the Poultry Industry, written by trusted WATT Global Media editors and industry experts will equip egg producers and marketers with information to help them make critical business decisions. Purchase your copy.
