Chickens are inquisitive animals, and in their natural surroundings, they form friendships and social hierarchies, recognize one another and develop pecking orders, love and care for their young, and enjoy full lives that include dust-bathing, making nests, and roosting in trees. In factory farms, however, chickens are denied these activities and suffer because of it.
How do you know that they suffer? Have you ever asked one how it felt?
Have you ever stopped to wonder why poultry, that had in years past always been seen pecking around the farmyard, laying their eggs in old tyres, between straw bales or under sheds, were put into barns? The farmyard is a perfect resevoir for disease. Vehicles, visitors, dogs, vermin, predators and the weather all have the potential to harm the flock. So yes, free range birds might have had freedom, but they had equally short lives marred by infections, wounds, predatory animals, little boys with pellet guns, and the farmers wife with the stewpot in one hand and a hatchet in the other. Poultry kept indoors, are free from these and other dangers.
Laying hens live in battery cages stacked tier upon tier in huge warehouses. Confined seven or eight to a cage, they don’t have enough room to turn around or spread even one wing. Conveyor belts bring in food and water and carry away eggs. Farmers often induce greater egg production through “forced molting”: Chickens are denied food and light for days, which leads to feather and weight loss.(4)
From birth to 18-20 weeks of age chicks are loose housed in barns with deep bedding. It is only when they reach point of lay that they are moved to battery cages.
Keeping hens in battery cages may not be the prettiest sight, but it is efficient, cost effective, minimises labour requirements and keeps the eggs clean.
Hens moult naturally, usually at the change of the seasons, but not necessarily all at the same time. "Forced molting" should really be called synchronised molting because it makes all the birds molt at the same time.
Is not detrimental to the hens as it increases production.
To prevent stress-induced behaviors caused by extreme crowding—such as pecking their cagemates to death—hens are typically kept in semi-darkness, and the ends of their sensitive beaks are cut off with hot blades without any painkillers. The wire mesh of the cages rubs their feathers and skin off and cripples their feet. Chickens can live for more than a decade, but laying hens in factory farms are exhausted and unable to produce as many eggs by the time they are 2 years old, so they are slaughtered.(5,6) More than 100 million “spent” hens die in slaughterhouses each year.(7) Ninety-eight percent of the egg industry’s hens are confined to cages in factory farms.(8)
Hens pecking their cage mates to death has nothing to do with close confinement, it is just something hens do regardless of the amount of space they have.
Semi darkness? Hens need 14 to 16 hours of good light a day in order to lay. They also need dark for the other 8-10 hours.
Beaks are made of the same material as human fingernails, I don't know about you, but I don't take painkillers when I cut my nails. Chickens don't need them either. Only the sharp tip is removed to prevent excess damage due to pecking. If hens were as loving and friendly as you claim beak trimming would not be necessary. It is done because of the hen's natural tendency to peck each other, it has nothing to do with close confinement.
All birds lose their feathers from time to time. Although battery cages might exacerbate this, it is not uncommon to see free range chickens with feathers missing.
Yes, sad as it may sound once egg production drops to around 80% the hens are usually euthanised and replaced with new stock. Not only does this allow the producer to increase his production but it also enables the barn (yes it's a barn not a warehouse) to be cleaned and disinfected, thus reducing any chance of disease.
More than 9 billion “broiler” chickens are raised in sheds each year.(9) Artificial lighting is manipulated to keep the birds eating as often as possible. To keep up with demand and to reduce production costs, genetic selection calls for big birds and fast growth (it now takes only 6 weeks to “grow out” a chick to “processing” weight), which causes extremely painful joint and bone conditions.(10) Undercover investigations into the “broiler” chicken industry have repeatedly revealed that birds were suffering from dehydration, respiratory diseases, bacterial infections, heart attacks, crippled legs, and other serious ailments.
Well I'm glad peta that you acknowledge that broilers are raised in sheds not warehouses.
What is wrong with a producer wanting to keep production costs to a minimum? This is the accepted practice in every industry throughout the world, why should farming be any different?
Occasionally birds will be seen with the conditions you mention but by no means are they the norm, if they were no bird would ever make it into the food chain.
At the slaughterhouse, chickens are hung upside-down, their legs are forced into metal shackles, their throats are slit, and they are immersed in scalding-hot defeathering tanks. They are often conscious throughout the entire process. Click here to read more about an undercover investigation at a KFC supplier’s slaughterhouse, where workers were caught on video stomping on chickens, kicking them, and violently slamming them against floors and walls.
Nonsense, once the birds throat is cut the blood pressure drops and the bird loses consciousness immediately. I'd be very interested to know why the workers were kicking chickens and slamming them against walls. In no way is this normal behaviour. These people were either paid to behave this way, so they could be videod, or they were coerced into doing it some other way.
Quote of the daySix million Jews died in concentration camps, but six billion broiler
chickens will die this year in slaughter houses.
-Ingrid Newkirk
(_Washington_Post_, Nov 13, 1983)
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