A chicken's breed is the most important factor in their overall welfare. Why is breed so important and what are the barriers to implementing better breeds?

There are four main components that determine chicken health and welfare: housing & environment, stocking density (crowdedness), slaughter method, and breed. Compassion in World Farming's Food Business team helps companies improve in all four of these areas, offering technical assistance to food businesses to implement better practices in each of these areas safely, smoothly, and effectively.

The breed component can be both the trickiest to understand and to implement. Here is a breakdown of why the breed of chicken is so important to a bird's well-being.

Why breed?

Most commercial chicken farms today use chicken breeds that have been selectively bred to grow extremely large, very quickly. Their growth is also concentrated in their breast muscle, which has the greatest market value. A century ago, chickens raised for meat grew to 2.5 pounds in about four months. Today, commercial chickens grow almost three times larger in under half the time—to 6.5 pounds in only six or seven weeks. By the time they are ready for market, the birds are the weight and age equivalent of a 400-pound 8-year-old child.

The birds grow so fast and disproportionally large that many cannot even stand, their legs giving out underneath them. This poor breeding leads to multiple health problems, including:

• difficulty walking and standing
• difficulty breathing
• painful muscle deformities
• poor bone health and painful bone conditions
• organ failure
• skin lesions and feather loss from excessive sitting and lying down (similar to bedsores), especially if the litter is soaked in excrement.

Some companies have made great progress in improving housing and stocking density by giving the birds ample room, good lighting, and enrichments such as haybales, perches, and ramps. But here's the thing: it doesn't matter how good their environment is if the birds are unhealthy.

Think of it this way—you could be on your dream vacation, but you probably wouldn't enjoy it much if you were partially paralyzed, had open rotting wounds, and had a hard time breathing every time you tried to move. Similarly, giving chickens perches and ramps isn't helpful if the birds are too weak to jump onto them, haybales aren't helpful if the hay is painful against their raw skin, and more space isn't helpful if the birds can't walk.

Therefore, breed can be considered the most important aspect of chicken welfare because the birds must first be healthy enough to interact and engage with their environment.

What makes a better breed?

CIWF supports breeds that grow at a more natural pace and in more natural proportions. This helps ensure that the birds' organ systems (pulmonary, respiratory, musculoskeletal, etc.) function properly and that they are free of bone and muscle deformities such as woody breast. It also ensures that the birds have an optimal center of gravity, enabling them to balance on perches and walk properly.

What are the challenges with switching to better breeds?

Sadly, higher welfare breeds are not widely available—at least, not yet. Thankfully, some chicken companies are noticing the consumer demand for higher-welfare chicken breeds and are working to implement them in their production. However, changing business practices can be a huge risk, and so companies want to know that the transition will pay off. Compassion in World Farming is working with producers to mitigate those fears and risks by connecting those interested in raising higher welfare breeds with interested buyers.

In addition, with breast meat so highly valued in the United States, farmers transitioning to more proportional breeds face a dilemma—either raise more chickens to produce the same amount of breast meat or try to market other equally edible but often less demanded parts of the bird, such as the wings and thighs.

To prevent more animals from being added to the food system, CIWF is working with producers and food businesses on the latter by implementing more products and recipes that utilize the whole bird. That way, we can feed more people with the same or less number of birds.

By rethinking breeding practices, we can create a future where chickens are not just raised, but respected—ensuring that both their welfare and our food system are sustainable, humane, and compassionate.