Effect of Cage Size and Bird Density on Performance of Six Commercial Strains of Layers

Abstract

THE trend toward housing egg-producing strains of chickens at high densities results from rising costs of buildings, equipment and labor. Cages are used more with birds housed at high densities. Logan (1965) reported if birds are to be housed at high densities cages should be used, while floor housing is advantageous for low densities.Effects of cage size, number of birds per cage, and bird density on performance of egg-producing birds have been widely studied (Shupe and Quisenberry, 1961; Lowe and Heywang, 1964; Moore et al., 1965; Cook and Dembnicki, 1966; Elmslie et al., 1966; Wilson et al., 1967; and Champion and Zindel, 1968). In general, egg production declined and mortality increased as bird population or bird density increased.Several researchers found that responses of layer strains differ significantly with various cage-size and bird-density environments (Gowe, 1956; Francis, 1957a; Cook and Dembnicki, 1966; Elmslie et al., 1966; Wilson et al.,…