Share of egg-laying hens in cage-free systems
About this data
More Data on Animal Welfare
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in Data
All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.
Notes on our processing step for this indicator
- Data for the UK, US, and EU member states are sourced from official statistics. Data for other countries are taken from a compilation by the Welfare Footprint Institute, which combines national statistics and industry reports.
- For the UK, hen housing counts and shares are approximated from the share of eggs produced in each housing type, due to limited data availability.
- For the US, pastured hens are included under free-range, and organic hens not reported as free-range or pastured are included under barn or aviary.
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Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Share of egg-laying hens in cage-free systems”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser (2023) - “Animal Welfare”. Data adapted from European Commission, Defra, USDA, Welfare Footprint Institute. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260429-120536/grapher/eggs-cage-free.html [online resource] (archived on April 29, 2026).How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
European Commission (2022) and other sources – processed by Our World in DataFull citation
European Commission (2022); European Commission (2026); European Commission (2025); Defra (2026); USDA (2018); USDA (2025); Welfare Footprint Institute (2022) – processed by Our World in Data. “Share of egg-laying hens in cage-free systems” [dataset]. European Commission, “Laying hens by way of keeping”; European Commission, “Eggs market situation dashboard (2026-04-22)”; European Commission, “Eggs market situation dashboard (2025-01-29)”; Defra, “UK egg statistics”; USDA, “Egg Markets Overview”; Welfare Footprint Institute, “Global hen inventory” [original data]. Retrieved April 29, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260429-120536/grapher/eggs-cage-free.html (archived on April 29, 2026).Download
Quick download
Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.
Data API
Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.
Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/eggs-cage-free.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseMetadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/eggs-cage-free.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseExcel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/eggs-cage-free.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests
# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/eggs-cage-free.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})
# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/eggs-cage-free.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()R
library(jsonlite)
# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/eggs-cage-free.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/eggs-cage-free.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/eggs-cage-free.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear