Comparative evaluation of three egg production systems: Housing characteristics and management practices.
This paper is an integral part of the special publication series that arose from the multidisciplinary and multi-institutional project of the Coalition for Sustainable Egg Supply (CSES). The CSES project involves 3 housing systems for egg production at the same research farm site in the Midwest, USA, namely, a conventional cage (CC) house, an aviary (AV) house, and an enriched colony (EC) house. The CC house (141.4 m L×26.6 m W×6.1 m H) had a nominal capacity of 200,000 hens (6 hens in a cage at a stocking density of 516 cm2/hen), and the cages were arranged in 10 rows, 8 tiers per cage row, with a perforated aisle walkway at 4-tier height. The AV house (154.2 m L×21.3 m W×3.0 m H) and the EC house (154.2 m L×13.7 m W×4.0 m H) each had a nominal capacity of 50,000 hens. The AV house had 6 rows of aviary colonies, and the EC house had 5 rows of 4-tier enriched colonies containing perches, nestbox, and scratch pads (60 hens per colony at a stocking density of 752 cm2/hen). The overarching goal of the CSES project, as stated in the opening article of this series, was to comprehensively evaluate the 3 egg production systems from the standpoints of animal behavior and well-being, environmental impact, egg safety and quality, food affordability, and worker health. So that all the area-specific papers would not have to repeat a detailed description of the production systems and the management practices, this paper is written to provide such a description and to be used as a common reference for the companion papers.
Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA.
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Y
Zhao
Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA.
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TA
Shepherd
Department of Animal Science, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA.
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JC
Swanson
Department of Animal Science, University of California, Davis, CA, USA.
J A
JA
Mench
Department of Animal Science, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA.
D M
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Karcher
Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA hxin@iastate.edu.
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H
Xin
D000822:Animal Husbandry / Q000592:standards*; D000827:Animal Welfare; D000818:Animals; D002645:Chickens / Q000502:physiology*; D004531:Eggs; D005260:Female; D006799:Housing, Animal / Q000592:standards*; D008372:Manure / Q000032:analysis; D015146:Midwestern United States
D008372:Manure
aviary; conventional cage; egg production; enriched colony; hen house