• Livestock

Use of elevated platforms in broiler chicken barns

The BroilerNet project involves a bottom-up approach to identify challenges and innovation needs for broiler farmers in Europe and to collect promising and already successfully implemented Good Practices to meet the challenges in question. The top Good Practices selected by experts within the three thematic areas (animal health management, animal welfare, and sustainability) have been summarized in factsheets. Providing broiler farms with elevated platforms is a good practice to improve bird welfare. These platforms help the birds perform their natural resting behaviour on elevated areas and also help mitigate the occurrence of leg injuries resulting from rapid growth due to genetic selection. The rapid and massive growth of their breast and thighs causes them to spend long periods of rest, and their inactivity increases even more with age. Broilers are highly motivated to use platforms from the first week of life. Therefore, these platforms should be easily accessible to the birds at all stages of their growth. Elevated platforms not only provide additional locomotion possibilities for broilers but are also known to reduce the prevalence and severity of lameness, foot pad dermatitis, and hock burns.