Behavioural needs, priorities and preferences of laying hens

We review the behavioural needs, priorities and preferences of laying hens for increased space, perching, nesting, foraging and dustbathing behaviour. Hens make full use of and may work to gain access to perches, however it is not yet known how perching ranks in comparison with other behaviours. Laying hens appear to have an instinctive need to perform pre-laying (nest-building) behaviour and have a strong preference for a discrete, enclosed nest site, for which they will work hard to gain access as oviposition approaches. Access to a nest site is a high-ranking priority for laying hens, preferred over food at this time. Foraging is a behavioural need, with peat, sand and wood shavings preferred substrates in choice experiments. There is no reduction in time spent foraging when a cost is imposed, nor when feed is freely available. Dustbathing is currently viewed as a behavioural need, as the extent to which hens value dustbathing is not known. Bird preferences for space are complex and confounded by interactions between group size and stocking density. There is some evidence that priority for space varies during the day and increases when the total space available to a group of birds is restricted, and that greater priority is given to space than to small group size. The presence of apparently purposeless behaviour, of high levels of aggression or redirected behaviours such as feather pecking and cannibalism are indicators that the housing system is not meeting the behavioural needs of the hens and hence is not satisfactory for bird welfare.