Infectious disease spread in free-range egg-laying hens based on empirical mobility patterns and contact networks

Introduction and data. RFID sensors provide a promising technology for welfare and health conditions assessment in the egg production industry (Ruhnke et al., 2019). The original dataset of free-range hens movements in Australia was generated from 18 000 commercial laying hens housed in a multi-tier aviary system using an innovative custom-built RFID system. This allowed the tracking of individual hen movements on the range and in the hen house for the entire 56-week duration of the laying period. The contact dataset includes information about 2644 hens who survived whole observation and were subject to necropsy at the end of their laying period for the presence or absence of some diagnosed diseases.