Not necessarily better. My uni did experiments to see how far a chicken moved after being put in a free range pen, and they hardly move. Such pens are large and contain hundreds if not 1000s of chickens. (We tend to imagine free range as 15 hens in a flock, but that is miles away from the truth) Hypothesis was that since Chicken are flock animals they get stressed in these pens and the weaker ones now are on the outside of multiple flocks leading to more stress and feather picking as dominance never really are settled. Roomy cages with proper perches and such paradoxically might be “better” for industrially farmed chicken.
Not necessarily better. My uni did experiments to see how far a chicken moved after being put in a free range pen, and they hardly move. Such pens are large and contain hundreds if not 1000s of chickens. (We tend to imagine free range as 15 hens in a flock, but that is miles away from the truth) Hypothesis was that since Chicken are flock animals they get stressed in these pens and the weaker ones now are on the outside of multiple flocks leading to more stress and feather picking as dominance never really are settled. Roomy cages with proper perches and such paradoxically might be “better” for industrially farmed chicken.