Cage Battery

a unit for rearing, keeping, or feeding agricultural poultry in cages. The principal elements of a battery are poultry cages (with latticed, grid, or solid walls) with joined side and back walls or only side walls, placed in one or several tiers; feeders, placed outside the cages; watering devices, either guttered or valved; a receptacle for droppings; and mechanisms for distributing fodder (bins, conveyers, and other feeders), gathering eggs, and cleaning the cage battery of droppings (scrapers or conveyors).

There are batteries for young birds of a specific age, for adult birds (layers), and for mixed ages. Each cage of a battery can house 20 or more young birds and up to seven layers. Automatic electric heaters are used to warm batteries for chicks. If batteries are unheated the required air temperature must be maintained throughout the premises.

Cage batteries are set up in sections of poultry farms and on sovkhoz and kolkhoz egg farms. Chicks are reared in the USSR in the KBM-2A cage battery for 2,600 chicks and the KBE-1 for 1,300 chicks; layers are kept in the KBNI-450 for 500 hens and the KBN for 2,350 hens.