Denny's crows about eggs from cage-free chickens in video

Crowing about its cage-free egg plan in a video starring crackling hens set free from their cages, Denny's on Thursday joined the crowd of eateries that made similar announcements in recent weeks and months.

The chain, which serves more than 400 million eggs a year, says its U.S. restaurants will serve cage-free eggs by 2026, with the announcement promoted in a video via Denny's social channels and website. Denny's Twitter feed has a following of 279,000.

Displaying an array of clucking chickens, the video includes voice overs that have the birds conversing about what they'll do with their new-found freedom, with the banter including a reference to the old joke about chickens and road crossings.

"These serial announcements make it plain that the long history of caging chickens as a conventional production method is coming to an end," Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, wrote in a blog post.

In November, Taco Bell positioned itself as the early bird, saying it would only serve eggs produced by cage-free hens by the end of this year, to the benefit of approximately 500,000 hens annually. The timing set by the fast-food chain has it jumping ahead of McDonald's (MCD), Burger King, Starbucks (SBUX) and others in the speed at which it's making the move.