My best guess is that a random cage-free corporate campaign increases animal welfare due to increasing the amount of feed needed to produce 1 kg of eggs, and therefore increasing agricultural-land-years. It makes sense hens in barns need more feed because they can move around, and therefore spend more energy. However, chickens may have higher mortality in barns in some cases, and this pushes the amount of feed needed to produce 1 kg of eggs up. I have not investigated this much, but asked Gemini 2.5 about it on 11 April 2025, and it suggested there is lots of overlap between the feed needed to produce 1 kg of eggs with chickens in barns and cages. It provided a range of 1.9 to 2.1 feed-kg/​egg-kg for cages, and 2.0 to 2.2 feed-kg/​egg-kg for barns.
In any case, I estimate cage-free and broiler welfare corporate campains increase the welfare of target beneficiaries, and soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes 1.14 % and 6.51 % as cost-effectively as funding Centre for Exploratory Altruism Research’s (CEARCH’s) High Impact Philanthropy Fund (HIPF). So I recommend this instead.
My best guess is that a random cage-free corporate campaign increases animal welfare due to increasing the amount of feed needed to produce 1 kg of eggs, and therefore increasing agricultural-land-years. It makes sense hens in barns need more feed because they can move around, and therefore spend more energy. However, chickens may have higher mortality in barns in some cases, and this pushes the amount of feed needed to produce 1 kg of eggs up. I have not investigated this much, but asked Gemini 2.5 about it on 11 April 2025, and it suggested there is lots of overlap between the feed needed to produce 1 kg of eggs with chickens in barns and cages. It provided a range of 1.9 to 2.1 feed-kg/​egg-kg for cages, and 2.0 to 2.2 feed-kg/​egg-kg for barns.
In any case, I estimate cage-free and broiler welfare corporate campains increase the welfare of target beneficiaries, and soil ants, termites, springtails, mites, and nematodes 1.14 % and 6.51 % as cost-effectively as funding Centre for Exploratory Altruism Research’s (CEARCH’s) High Impact Philanthropy Fund (HIPF). So I recommend this instead.