Movement Patterns of Laying Hens Across Production Stages in a Commercial Aviary System

We characterised radio-frequency identification (RFID) transitions among monitored areas of a commercial multi-tier aviary using a four-stage cohort of 2162 Lohmann Brown hens. The analysis used 204 retained dates from 21 November 2016 to 15 November 2017, approximately 18–70 weeks of age according to the supplied production records. Source bouts shorter than 10 s were excluded, and successive same-area bouts separated by at most 10 s were merged. Self-loops comprised 73.9% of 23,756,706 recorded transitions and were concentrated at the feeders. Pooled non-looping rates were 9.65, 13.54, 17.77 and 15.10 transitions per detected hen-day during pre-, peak-, late- and end-laying. Lower feeders formed the strongest cross-area connections, with pop-hole links more prominent later. Restricting existing links to the six indoor feeder/nest-box locations reduced the peak-to-late increase from 31.2% to 2.7%. A higher-coverage cohort and timing sensitivities retained the same ordering of stage rates. Adding eligible cross-midnight non-looping links increased counts by less than 0.9% per stage. These descriptive results separate repeated detection from cross-area adjacency, while showing that contrast magnitudes depend on the locations represented. Age, season, management and monitoring coverage changed together; the records do not identify their separate effects or verify continuous occupancy or outdoor journeys.