US chicken companies pioneered restricting sleep to keep birds eating around the clock.
A new study (Li et al., 2026) recommends giving chickens just 2 hours of darkness nightly to maximize the time they spend eating. The study and photo are Chinese.
We know chickens have far better hapiness with 7–8 hours of darkness to sleep.
But they eat more when they are sleep restricted.
Please don’t fall into the ‘cage free is fine’ delusion, because putting so many chickens in a square meter that none of them have personal space is probably about as miserable for them as being in a cage. If anything it can be worse, since chickens can and will attack and eat injured chickens.