Guillermo Fondevila

1. INTRODUCTION Consumer demands and the pressure of supermarket chains are changing rapidly the way eggs are produced. Enriched cages are not considered a sound alternative to improve animal welfare standards in the developed countries. Consequently, the industry is moving hens from battery cages towards alternative systems, such as deep litter and aviary barns, with or without access to an ...

INTRODUCTIONFeed management practices, aiming to improve animal welfare without increasing production cost, are becoming more important for the poultry industry (Mateos et al., 2012). In broilers, ad libitum feeding of pellet feeds is associated with a reduction in starch digestibility (Svihus and Hetland, 2001; Abdollahi et al., 2011; Serrano et al., 2013) and an increase in the incidence of meta ...