Cruelty towards poultry chicken

In this article you will come to know about the cruelty towards chicken.

There is the broiler chicken which is killed for its meat  and there are the chickens which are used to produce eggs.

Egg producing chickens

Chickens who are used to produce eggs live in tiny cages which are made of wire on all four sides. The floor slopes forward so that the eggs can be easily collected as they will roll down. The sloping floor often prevents the hens from sitting. This sometimes causes a hen’s foot to grow around the wire. Because of this the hen cannot move and starves to death. Because of living on the wire mash the feet of the chicken often become deformed and crippled. Hens often get their heads stuck in the wire walls of the cages.They cannot move and starve to death.

The hens are crammed together, so, often while they are trying to move they hurt each other.

As the male chickens don’t produce eggs, they are killed when they are chicks. A machine called a chicken puller separates the male chicks when they are one day old. Then these cute little, fluffy male chicks are suffocated by being stuffed into a bag. Some farms cut off their heads, while others explode them in a explosion chamber.  A  paste is made out of the male chicks meat and shells. This paste is fed to the other chickens, turning them into meat eaters.

Chickens ussually peck for fun, but in factory farms chickens turn aggressive and start pecking each other to death. Because of that the chickens are debeaked. A chickens beak has a highly sensitive layer of tissue. A hen’s beak is destroyed by being jammed against a red hot metal, heated at 800 c for two seconds. Some chicken have to get debeaked again, either because not enough of the beak got burned or because the beak has grown back. Many chicken starve to death because their beaks are burned too far to allow them to eat.

Because the caves are overcrowded the hens are infested by pests. That is why heavy doses of pesticides are given to the hens to protect them from the pests. Pesticides aren’t good for our health so pesticide must not be good for a chicken’s health eighter.

The chicken get their water and food from a through running in front of their cage.

Scientifically balanced rations  of maize millet, soya, rye, barley, wheat and oats are fed to the hens. Discarded, dead and sick chicken’s meat are added to the feed of the other hens, turning them into carnivores. As the meat of dead, sick and discarded chickens are used it isn’t healthy for chickens at all.

In villages chicken dung is turned into organic fertilizer, while in factory farms litter is turned into waste. The hens are crammed together, so they will keep littering. The litter will collect in the floor bellow the wire mesh. The poor hens have to bear the ammonia moisture stench every day for long hours. Hens exposed to high levels of ammonia and moisture caused by litter ‘get litter burned’.

A hen wants privacy to lay an egg. But in factory farms the hens have no privacy. In a factory farm because of the stress a hen takes more than a hour to lay an egg, while in nature a hen takes just a quarter of an hour.  As soon as the hen has layed the egg it rolls away because  the floor is incline. Scientists are trying to make chikcens better egg machines by by trying to manipulate hens to remove their brooding genes.

Overcrowded cages cause pest infestations and  stress diseases. Caged layer fever is a disease where chicks use up the minerals from their muscles and bones. Because of this desease they cannot even stand sometimes. Chicks jump into the air sometimes making a loud squawk and fall down dead. This disease is called  flip over syndrome. The hens also get avian flu, bronchitis, tuberculosis, cancer,etc.

18% chicken die at the end of one year, not by any disease but because they are caged. The hens are exhausted by the age of two years old and are killed for pet food and soup.

Broiler chickens

They are many similarities between the lives of a broiler chicken and an egg producing chicken.

The chickens are also debeaked when they are chicks. Scientists have genetically changed broiler chickens to grow much faster and produce more meat. Because of these genetic  alterations the hens have serious health problems. Their bodies often get too heavy for their legs to support them. They often have underdeveloped heart and lungs. This results in congestive heart failure.

The chickens have to stay in grower houses, which are huge sheds, during their small lives. Grower houses give the chickens only half a square foot of place.

As the chicken farmers want the chicken to grow as fat as possible they control the lighting of the grower house. If the lights are switched on in the grower house then the chicken will think it is day and feed. So the chicken farmers make more frequent days and nights. And that way the chickens are tricked into eating more and gain weight faster.

Crates full of chicken are stacked on the backs of trucks. The trucks then take them to the slaughter house. The chickens aren’t sheltered from the high temperature or cold temperature while being transported.  Many of the chickens die by getting suffocated in the summer or getting frozen in the winter.

At 6 weeks old broiler chickens are killed for their meat. In the slaughter house thousands of chicken are killed every hour.

Fully conscious chickens are hung on a moving rail, by their feet, from shackles. The chickens are stunned when they run through electrified water. Lower currents then necessary to stun the chickens are used in slaughter houses. This means that when a hen’s throat is slashed it can still feel the pain. And then the hen is submerged in a scalding tank. But if the hen’s throats aren’t slashed properly it means that they reach the scalding tank alive. This has happened so many times that the industry has been given the name “redskins”.

My visit to the Poultry shop

When I visited the poultry shop it was horrible. The chickens were stuffed together in tiny hen coops.The hen coops were covered in chicken dung and feathers. I saw a chicken who had a wound on the leg. I also saw chickens who had their beaks damaged. I guessed they would have been debeaked. I saw some chickens who seemed to have some problem in the eye.

If you want to help chickens then stop eating meat!