At the heart of any animal-welfare-oriented livestock farming system is the aim of enabling animals to express their species-specific behaviour. Broiler chickens kept on litter in well-managed floor-rearing systems already benefit from good basic conditions. Nevertheless, additional enrichment options such as straw bales, pecking blocks, and the distribution of grain and other materials in the litter are readily accepted by the birds. These help the birds to engage in essential behavioural patterns such as scratching, pecking and dust bathing, thereby promoting animal welfare.

Two current model and demonstration projects (MuD) on animal welfare focus on the practical testing of various enrichment materials and options in broiler houses. Which are particularly suitable for broilers? What do the birds take to particularly well, and what less so? What are the advantages and disadvantages?

In addition to straw bales, the project farms are using, in particular, pecking blocks of varying hardness, PeckPucks and an automatic littering system. The experiences to date from the ‘MaVeTi’ project run by the Foundation of the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover (TiHo) and the Lower Saxony Chamber of Agriculture, as well as the ‘Improving Animal Welfare in Broiler Farming’ project run by Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) Munich and the University of Rostock, are summarised in a new video by the Fokus Tierwohl network.

In it, the participating farmers and scientists describe how the use of enrichment materials affects the animals, what they have found particularly successful, but also how much effort is involved in providing these additional resources. On one point, everyone agrees: it brings considerable added value for animal welfare – and that, in turn, is very easy to communicate.