Know your eggs - free-range, cage-free and colony

Cage eggs (Colony eggs)

Cage eggs come from hens that live in colony cages and are commonly referred to as colony eggs.

Colony cages are a marginal improvement on the conventional battery cages, which were banned in 2023. They provide slightly more space (minimum 750 cm2 per hen), are equipped with nest areas, and have limited perch space and a scratch area.

SPCA considers that cage systems, including colony cages, are inappropriate as they are unable to provide for a hen’s full repertoire of behavioural and physical wants and needs.

Cage-free eggs – barn and free-range production

Cage-free is a broad term and includes barn and free-range egg production systems. In a barn system, hens roam freely inside (uncaged).

There is currently no standard government definition of what free-range means in terms of egg production. Nor do the labelling requirements within the Food Standards Code (Food Standards Australia New Zealand) address the type of production system where eggs are laid. However, the New Zealand Fair Trading Act 1986 prohibits the use of any false, misleading or deceptive claims, or other representations.

The key difference with free-range eggs, as described by the Code of Welfare for Layer Hens (2018) developed under the Animal Welfare Act 1999, is that hens are kept in barns with access to an outdoor range. While the Code does not specify a minimum size of the outdoor area, it limits the number of chickens on the range to 2,500 per hectare.

For both barn and free-range systems, sheds are generally fitted with the same equipment, including nesting boxes that provide a quiet space for hens to lay their eggs, litter on the floor that provides hens with opportunities to scratch, forage, explore, and dust bathe.

However, in free-range systems, access to the outdoors is given through pop-holes placed along the shed walls. Where pop-holes provide an outlook that is attractive to the hens, this can help encourage hens out onto the range, allowing them to actively explore their environment.

Just providing access to an outdoor area does not necessarily mean that the hens use the range well or go outside as often as they could. Whether hens range outside depends on several factors, including the availability and type of shelter outside, a hen’s own innate fear of overhead predators, such as hawks (this is where overhead shelter is effective), early outdoor experience, pop-hole availability, as well as season and weather conditions, amongst others.

Unfortunately, terms such as 'free-range’ or ‘free to roam’ do not always provide assurance of good animal welfare.

You may want to ask producers some questions before buying their eggs. Good questions include:

• What is the stocking density on the farm?
• What kind of conditions do the hens live in?
• How many hens are there per square metre outside?
• What access do the hens have to the outdoors?
• What type of shelter do the hens have outside on the range?
• Are the farms regularly audited?

Alternatively, you can look for independent trusted third-party certification on the product label to assure you that high animal welfare standards have been achieved.

Certification programmes have their own standards to which farms are audited, and these may differ between programmes. For example, the size of the outdoor range required, and the amount of time hens are given access to the range, may differ between different standards. Auditing may be independent, announced and unannounced, depending on requirements of the programme. Programmes include SPCA Certified, AsureQuality, or BioGro logos, amongst others.

All SPCA Certified branded eggs are cage-free and come from barn and free-range farms that are independently audited according to the SPCA Certified animal welfare standards for layer hens.

By buying eggs from those farmers that are independently audited for animal welfare, you can ensure that the eggs you are buying are from farms that care about the welfare of their hens.