The Young Turks Discuss Awful Cruelty to Chicks

There is work going on in the layer industry (4.00 / 4)

to enable hatcheries or breeders to restrict the mechanism that makes the embryo male in germinated eggs when the embryos form. It's late for me tonight, but I'll see if I can't look up the articles I've read over the past few months on this research and post some links tomorrow.

In reptiles it's the incubation temps that determine the sex of the embryos, in chickens it's a different mechanism.

I hate to say this, but as horrific as the grinder is, it's probably about as quick a death as they could give the chicks. Probably as quick as decapitation, which is as quick as it gets. I know it's a difficult thing to say, but when you look at how long it takes the chicks to die, and compare that with the way chickens are usually killed on a farm, by slitting the throat and bleeding, it's faster. I'm not saying that this is the right way, it's just a very fast death, a couple of seconds.

But in addition to this, look at how the birds are handled from the time they hatch, both the cockerel and pullet chicks. Moved about on a conveyer, roughly handled by the sexers, tossed down a chute, I'm assuming for the cockerels, placed into machines that cut off part of the upper beak with no anesthesia or anelgesia, not that I think that would even be possible with a bird that small, at least not right now, although perhaps it could be in the future - they anesthetise salmon smolts when they inject RFID transponders into them, and salmon smolts are pretty fragile. Then on to sorting in crates for shipment to the producers.

Everything in this video, with the exception of the chicks that are left to die on the floor either from neglect or accidental scalding is based on 'sound science' from both USDA and the industry. And the really sad fact is that many people in the egg industry don't understand why the general public find this treatment of the animals that they and the industry depend on horrific. Perhaps that's the saddest thing of all.

Regarding locavores as elitists - explain to me how supporting local business is elitist....

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by: Joanne Rigutto @ Wed Sep 09, 2009 at 06:09:37 AM UTC

Yea (4.00 / 1)

I agree with all of that...

Everything in this video, with the exception of the chicks that are left to die on the floor either from neglect or accidental scalding is based on 'sound science' from both USDA and the industry. And the really sad fact is that many people in the egg industry don't understand why the general public find this treatment of the animals that they and the industry depend on horrific. Perhaps that's the saddest thing of all.

It's also sad to consider that in some small way they're doing that for me. Because I bought cheap fast food chicken sandwiches for years, and cheap egg sandwiches. I would have paid the extra twenty five cents per if I had known about this video. ::Sigh:: Or would I? I said the same thing about the last cruelty video we watched here.. Death on a Factory Farm, and I've bought FF Pork since then many times..  

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by: Curtis Abbey @ Wed Sep 09, 2009 at 06:19:15 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Even the small farms like mine (4.00 / 4)

that keep range hens for eggs are a part of this system. One way or another, if birds are being produced for egg laying, around 50%, give or take a few percent, are going to be cockerels. The question is what do you do with all those cockerels?

In the wild, the cocks would move into new areas, or take over a flock when the dominant bird or birds died. Or perhaps they'd live like they do on my farm, where the dominant roosters breed most of the hens and the subordinate roosters mingle with the hens and hop on one when big boy isn't looking. They'd also be fodder for the predators.

When we bring these birds into our culture, we are the predator instead of the fox, coyote, raccoon, rat, etc.

Personally I think it's incumbent on us as livestock keepers and people responsible for the support of the breeder industry, to treat and handle our animals with respect, they deserve it, they feed us, clothe us, put a roof over our heads, give us money to go on vacation, etc. They do so by giving up their lives at our request, on our schedule. We should be thankful for that and not forget who is supporting us.

That's why I'm more horrified at the debeaking machine, cage layer farms, confinement hog farms, etc. than I am at the auger, at least that's a quick death. Personally, I see those cockerels being killed as day olds more as incredibly wasteful of a life than anything else. Although others might well say that killing a broiler at 2 months old is a similar waste of a life as chickens are well able to live 8-10 years. When I was raising game birds and ornamental pheasants the rule of thumb we used to estimate how long a bird could live was to look at how long it took them to fully color out, that is, to grow their mature plumage. If it took a year, the bird had the potential to live 10, two years - 20, 3 years as is the case with peacocks they had the potential to live 30 years. Chickens color out their first year and have, by that rule, the potential to live 10 years, and we've had birds out here that lived that long. That rule doesn't apply to all birds, for instance, our emus color out their first year, and live to 20+. We have a pair out here, Spot and Sheila, who are 18 or 19 years old. Still laying, old Spot still tries to hatch a clutch of eggs every year.

The thing that really floors me is that the industry absolutely doesn't understand why the general public gets upset at seeing these videos. People in the public, I'm sure, looks at videos like these and say to themselves "If I were to do this to puppies and kittens I'd go to prison, be fined, and be prohibited from ever owning an animal again". Actually if you were caught treating a horse or a cow this way and you weren't licensed as a business, you'd probably be treated the same. And yet, a company like Hi-Line is not only not fined, etc. but are applauded as an efficient business by industry and government. By God, they're just "Feeding the world".

The only thing that Hi-Line is doing wrong, by industry standards and government regulation, as far as animal husbandry and cruelty goes, is letting some of those chicks go through the sanitizer and leaving some to die on the factory floor.  

Regarding locavores as elitists - explain to me how supporting local business is elitist....

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by: Joanne Rigutto @ Wed Sep 09, 2009 at 14:29:11 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I agree that the grinder is the least of it (4.00 / 1)

I am more bothered by the rough handling and the debeaking.

We have straight run bantam chickens... and so we have a collection of cockerels plus a rooster. They seem to get along OK when there are no hens to fight over, and they're from a breed that is especially placid. But, people who live in suburbs or cities can't keep roosters because of the noise. The boys have to go somewhere.

The fact is, aside from dogs and horses and cats, male farm animals are mostly useful as meat. Keeping males at all is more of a problem, and if you want females, you have to breed. Family farms have the option of choosing dual-purpose breeds and raising the males for meat.  

As it was, he did a deal with a blancmange, and the blancmange ate his wife.

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by: elfling @ Fri Sep 11, 2009 at 15:50:37 PM UTC

I agree with you (4.00 / 2)

I'm switching over to producing most of my replacement hens on farm using a combination of pure bred and cross bred birds.

I agree with you that most male animals in the meat producing breeds/species are best kept for meat production, although for some species/breeds this is true of female animals as well. That doesn't really apply to animals like horses and camelids in the USA as it's illegal to slaughter horses for human consumption in many if not all states (I think some have excemptions for personal consumption), and I don't think there's that much of a market for camelid meat in the USA. I do know of someone who had a llama slaughtered for their own consumption though.

Anyway, getting back to keeping males in the poultry population.... What I've found here on my farm is that we can keep roosters in the hen population as long as we keep an eye on the roosters' behavior toward each other and toward the hens and as long as the birds have lots of room. Our chickens are allowed the run of the property, so there's always lots of room for birds that have a beef with each other to get away in the event of a confrontation. Generally what will happen is that two birds will have an altercation, which lasts for a very short period of time - usually less than 30 seconds. One bird will yield to the other and run away. The winner of the conflict will give chase for a short distance then stop. This happens between hens and between hens and roosters as well. Anytime you have a population of animals there will be the occasional squable. The trick is knowing the behavioral profile of the species/breed you're working with and providing an environment that will allow those animals to function naturally with minimal stress. That's true especially in breeding groups.

We have around 70 chickens here living in a true free range environment. The birds have access to shelter, but unless a subgroup is placed in a seperate pen for selective breeding or medical reasons, they all comingle and they are never locked up. We have hens, roosters, juvenile birds and chicks. Everyone gets along, and even when they do get into the innevitable squable, someone always yields quickly. The birds are pretty good at judging who they can beat in a conflict. I monitor the behavior of the birds every time I go out, which is at least every couple hours during the day, and if it looks like we have a bird that is so agressive that it's constantly attacking the other birds or either Harold or me, I cull them from the flock. I do that with the emus, goats, and horses as well. We don't tollerate excessively agressive animals here.

I'm curently working on an article about this.

Regarding locavores as elitists - explain to me how supporting local business is elitist....

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by: Joanne Rigutto @ Sat Sep 12, 2009 at 18:08:59 PM UTC

[ Parent ]