As cage eggs are phased out around the world, how can producers lower the risks of free-range ‘hen heaven’? | Rural Australia

NBelinda Stauner-Dawson, the Ear Lake Macquarie on the central coast of the new South Wales, manages what looks like chicken utopia. Jesus brown chickens-popular flooring genus-1.4 hectares running a padok of 60 eggs. They can access fresh, green pasture every day and income and expenses from a chicken caravan – tunnels with a water tank, feeding and tunnels. Looking carefully at them is two permanent protective maremma dogs. Stauner-Dawson is proud of his happy Chooks and his eggs with his golden yellow yellow sold to his farm door customers and an organic butcher.

Utopia is not difficult. Stauner-Dawson breatates twice a year and moves regularly to reduce parasites to reduce parasites, and pays attention to diseases such as bird influenza, which can be introduced from wild birds. Predation has also been a major problem in the past.

Im I used to use electric fence to control the foxes, and I would lose too much birds from the wedge tail and sea eagles, but I haven’t lost a single chook to predasiser since I had dogs, or he says. “Without my dogs, I wouldn’t have been chickens that grow pastures.”

It is not a large -scale operation. “Not for everyone, Sta says Stauner-Dawson. “He gets more soil with less birds and is more expensive. He doesn’t make much money.”

Sixty years ago, most eggs came from free -range and backyard manufacturers. Today, Australia 19m chickens Producing eggs for our tables is found in three main systems: cage, barn grown (usually declared as cage without cage) and free range.

The cage system is climate -controlled, reduces the formation of the disease and provides freedom of hair becking and cannibalism, but limits the animal without tunnel or nesting boxes. The free range gives the bird’s exposure to outdoor exposure and allows natural behavior, but may expose it to the predation and disease transmitted by wild birds. The barn system limits the bird to a closed environment and provides access to sea bass and nesting boxes.

Jed GoodFellow is the Director of the Australian Animal Alliance and for eight years, Guides for Australian animal welfare standards and poultry. He says that all three systems have good and bad points, but an important difference is cumulative welfare concerns in cage egg production. Mortality rates in free -range systems can be reduced by appropriate management practices such as the development of appropriate hygiene protocols and vaccination programs.

“Problems such as behavioral deprivation within the cage system, fatty liver disease and influence on the penetration are in the nature of the system, GoodFellow, GoodFellow, GoodFellow, there are inherent in the system.” “However, the welfare problems of cage -free systems such as feather gaging, increasing mortality and cannibalism, which are all serious concerns, can be alleviated as producers become more experienced by the system.”

This month, the alliance of animals participated in a global call for a global action to prohibit cage eggs behind an investigation in 37 countries, including Australia, which is alleged to have shown “systemic pain in chickens.

Brian Ahmed was the president of the Victorian Federation Egg Group, and in the 1960s, his father began with free -range chickens with free -range chickens before controlling the change in cage egg production in the 1970s.

“You couldn’t control the disease at that time and scientific chickens showed that they took it off the ground [into cages] And he developed his welfare away from his feces and reduced parasite problems and use of antibiotics, Ah says Ahmed. “ We had better control in the huts, which gave us a more affordable egg. “

Ahmed is thought to be measured by the freedom of animal health with freedom of injury, disease and pain, hunger and thirst, and cage egg production is superior to other agricultural systems. As discussed in the science of contemporary animal welfare, the psychological welfare of the animal was not taken into consideration in the 1960s.

GoodFellow also points to the ban on the EU’s prohibition of cage egg production in 2012 in the debate on chicken welfare. Although Australian eggs are not exported, continuous use of the cage system believes that it adversely affects trade relations. “Europeans are generally very sensitive about animal welfare and Australia continues to allow [cage production] It adversely affects the general perception of Australia’s wider animal welfare standards. “

Greg Mills is primarily consultant to the egg industry that works with cage egg systems. Pointed to the research It was assigned by Australia EGG Corporation in 2012As a way to measure the stress of the chickens, hormone albumin in eggs measures corticosterone levels and “no difference in average corticosterone concentrations in production systems – but finds a significant difference between different farms than the same type of production.

Mills says that cage systems have seen the mortality rates lower than free range, saying that they come to the problem of “death or imprisonment .. However, animal welfare defenders argue that risk factors can be managed or reduced in potentially higher mortality rates-temperature fluctuations and predation-forbest-range systems, or reduced in completely open stables, and that the problems associated with imprisonment are natural in cage egg systems.

Some egg manufacturers, such as Canobolas Eggs and Somerville Eggs in the center of NSW near Victoria, use all systems. Lou Napolitano from Somerville EGGS says that various jobs are based entirely on market demands, but the preferred from an animal welfare standard continues to be cage or simple stables.

“The worst thing you can do to Chooks to get out of them, Nap says Napolitano, Napolitano says. “When you take them out, there is no biosyalty because they are involved in wildlife, they look beautiful when they are free, but they are very deceptive. The disease can still go into cages, but biogugur can be better control. All I have to do is to open and listen to our huts.