As specialized laying hens refers to female chickens that are kept to lay eggs. In today’s intensive egg industry, mostly hybrids are kept, whose laying performance has been boosted over the years through intensive breeding. With around 300 eggs a year, a hen lays well these days 120 eggs more than 50 years ago.
This can increase Health problems in the hens entail. Most of the eggs sold in Germany continue to come from barn systems where the animals have no access to the outside. In barn systems, nine hens per square meter live in sometimes very large systems. As in cage farming, the hens also lack employment here. The expression of natural behaviors is also severely restricted.
Fattening chickens, on the other hand, were bred for extreme daily gains in order to produce as much meat as possible in the shortest possible time. Many broilers are only four weeks old when they are slaughtered. Despite the extreme short lifespan then many suffer from it health problemsn due to torment breeding.
Catching the chickens for the Transport to the slaughterhouse is often associated with extreme stress for laying hens as well as broilers and often also leads to serious injuriessuch as broken bones, especially in the laying hens, who often suffer from osteoporosis due to the high egg production