What Really Happens on a Chicken Farm?

But chickens are more than products that consumers buy. They are intelligent, gentle animals who face unimaginable abuse at the hands of the chicken farming industry.

But why then, are they farmed for food, and why do they deserve better?

What Are Chickens Farmed For?

Billions of chickens are raised in the US alone—nearly all for food. A single broiler farm (those raising chickens for meat) can raise over 500,000 chickens in a single year, while egg factory farms can hold hundreds of thousands of layer hens at a time.

The vast majority of chickens in the US are forced to live in intensive factory farms where they face truly appalling conditions.

Egg-Laying Hens

Ever wonder where the term “mother hen” comes from? This charming phrase is often used to describe a protective human mother who’s always looking out for her children. Like humans, hens form strong bonds with their young, and protect their chicksout of a loving, maternal instinct.

This instinct is violently suppressed in hens who are confined within egg production facilities. Known as layer hens, these mother birds are treated as nothing more than egg-producing machines, bred to lay as often as possible, and deprived of their natural urge to protect their eggs.

And layer hens aren’t the only ones suffering in factory farms.

Chickens Raised For Meat Production

Known as broilers, chickens raised for meat live their lives in barren indoor sheds, debilitated by their own bodies which are selectively bred to grow unnaturally quickly. The modern broiler is manipulated to produce as much meat as possible, at minimal expense—all at the cost of the animals’ health. Because of this, these birds bear little resemblance to their wild counterparts, and suffer from health conditions throughout their lives.

Chicken Facts

Unfortunately, many people don’t empathize with chickens in the same way they do with their companion cats and dogs. But the truth is that chickens are clever, friendly, and even cuddly animals, who do not deserve to suffer on factory farms.

Do Chickens Feel Love?

“Love” is hard to define—for both humans and other animals. Scientists hesitate to say for sure whether animals feel love, but anyone who lives with a dog, cat, or other companion animals will know that love is felt, even if you can’t define it.

In the wild, chickens show love by protecting their babies under their wings and in other instinctual ways as they get older. Anyone who lives with rescue hens can speak to the close bonds they form with these affectionalte animals.

In intensive factory farms, though, there are not nearly enough workers to properly attend to individual animals, let alone form bonds with them. Nor is that the goal, given that they are simply being raised for food, as quickly as possible. In these unnatural environments, chickens are deprived of their natural instincts to play, protect their young, and seek affection.

Do Chickens Mourn Their Dead?

Unfortunately, there is minimal research on whether chickens mourn the loss of their family members and friends. This is because research tends to be dictated by whoever can fund it, and the chicken industry’s interest is not how chickens feel, but rather how quickly they can be turned into a product for profit.

Despite this, there is much anecdotal evidence that chickens do in fact grieve the deaths of their friends. It’s common for hens to form strong friendships, and when a friend dies, they appear to mourn their loss. These chickens call out with a sound, normally used among living birds, that means, “Where are you?” Hens who are devastated by loss may also isolate themselves from the flock, giving themselves space to grieve.

In unhealthy factory farms, many chickens die before they are even sent to slaughter, and even more distressingly, the chickens who live are forced to live alongside their dead companions. Can you imagine what that must be like?

Do Chickens Feel Sad When You Take Their Eggs?

Hens can certainly be protective of their eggs and nests, and use their beaks to fend off predators. Anyone who’s kept chickens will know that hens aren’t afraid to peck hands that veer too close to her eggs!

In egg production units, the confined conditions hens are kept in—known as battery cages—are endlessly at odds with their strong maternal desires to build nests and protect their eggs. The sloped floors in battery cages mean that hens barely even get to see their eggs, which roll into troughs at one side of the cage, ready to be taken by the hungry hands of egg companies.

Feeling sad, too, by the way chickens are treated on chicken farms? You can help end this abuse right now by asking some of the world’s largest corporations to care for these loving, feeling, breathing beings.

Is Chicken Farming Cruel?

There’s no doubt that chickens are sentient—living, breathing, feeling, consciously aware animals. Sadly, it’s also undeniable that industrial chicken farming is immensely cruel. Here’s why.

Beak Trimming

The suffering begins almost instantly for chicks after hatching. When they are only a few hours old, the tiny, innocent animals are sent down a conveyor belt to a beak trimming station, where their lives will be changed forever.

Beak trimming is the process of amputating portions of a chick’s beak. It is performed to prevent older birds from pecking one another, and even eating one another’s flesh–an unnatural behavior that is a direct result of the stressful conditions on factory farms.

So how does beak trimming actually impact a chicken? Well, a chicken’s beak functions much like humans’ hands. Their beak is their primary way of interacting with the world around them, and cutting off this part of their body can cause long-term, excruciating pain.

Battery Cages

One of the cruelest forms of confinement in modern-day farming are battery cages, used to confine egg-laying hens. They are generally a few feet wide and only 15 inches high. In this tiny space—too small for one hen to live comfortably—anywhere from four to 10 hens are crammed into a single cage at any time That’s the equivalent of living in a space the size of a lined piece of paper—like a human living their entire life in the space of a small bathtub. It’s unthinkable.

Forced Molting

Forced molting is a cruel tactic employed towards the end of a layer hen’s life, shortly before being sent to the slaughterhouse. By this time, hens’ bodies are exhausted, and their egg production begins to decline. In order to squeeze the very last bit of productivity out of these birds’ bodies, they are starved of food and water—sometimes for days on end. This causes weight loss, loss of feathers, misery, and panic among the birds, and sometimes even premature death.

When hens are fed again, their bodies go into overdrive, producing high volumes of eggs for a brief period before they are finally completely “spent” and shipped to the slaughterhouse to be killed. This practice is so cruel that some countries, such as Israel and the entire EU, have banned it. In the US, however, forced molting is still quite common. A method known as non-feed withdrawal is permitted, including practices such as feeding chickens a low-density diet to induce egg production.

At What Age Do Chickens Stop Laying Eggs?

Chickens have been known to live a decade or more outside of factory farms. In backyard flocks, the egg production of hens begins declining when the birds are around six years old, with most birds stopping egg production altogether at age seven. Many hens can live beyond their laying years, serving as solid proof that hens do not exist simply to produce eggs. On factory farms, layer hens usually do not make it past two years of life.

What Happens When Hens Stop Laying Eggs?

After less than two years, layer hens are considered “spent”—meaning their bodies have been pushed to the limit by producing hundreds of eggs, and they are no longer deemed cost effective. These hens are sent for slaughter as soon as their production begins to slow, which usually occurs between 18 and 24 months of age. In the wild, these animals would only just be considered adults.

The lives of misery and pain for these animals are matched by a needlessly cruel death. Known as live-shackle slaughter, this widespread killing method involves hanging birds upside down, suspended by their legs, which are brutally shoved into metal shackles—sometimes resulting in broken bones during the last moments of their lives. They are then dunked in an electrified bath of water intended to render them unconscious. Their throats are then slit, and their bodies are thrown into boiling water to be de-feathered.

As if this process is not traumatic enough, many chickens are, in fact, not rendered unconscious in the electrified bath, meaning they are conscious during their painful death. In 2019, the US Department of Agriculture estimated that over half a million chickens were still conscious when they were thrown into the de-feathering tank—meaning they were boiled alive.

No creature deserves to die this way. And yet so many of them do.

Selective Breeding

When broiler chickens are born, they have no idea that their growing bodies will cause them so much pain. Due to selective breeding, the animals experience “rapid growth” that causes them to grow too big, too quickly. Conventional breeds of chicken raised for meat are bred in this way to reach market weight at an unnaturally fast rate. As a result, they suffer muscle myopathies, deformities, poor foot health, heart conditions, and have trouble standing or walking. These agonizing body conditions are extremely common among broiler chickens, whose bodies are designed, by humans, to accommodate factory farm “production” schedules and profit—not the welfare of the chickens themselves.

Broiler Chickens Never See the Outdoors

Broiler chickens raised for meat might escape battery cages, but their living situations are equally bleak. Many factory farms force broiler chickens to live inside vast, windowless, and dimly-lit sheds where they will be crammed in alongside thousands of other birds. These barns are often so crowded that the birds are prevented from running, exploring, and sleeping properly. There’s simply nothing kind, or compassionate, about broiler barns.

Toxic Environment

Given that chickens are grown to unnatural sizes, and crammed together in unnaturally small spaces, it’s not surprising then that waste from these animals can become a serious problem. In the wild, animals are free to travel as they please. Even when large groups gather, such as buffalo or migrating birds, they tend to not remain in one place for very long. Why? In part, animals do not want to urinate or defecate in the same places they eat or sleep at night. But chickens on factory farms are not given the option to move away. The presence of toxins in chicken litter produces ammonia, which causes birds to suffer from painful, festering skin lesions.

And this rapid build-up of excrement inside factory farm sheds ultimately leaches out, causing dangerous soil, water, and air pollution that can affect other animals, human workers, and neighboring communities.

What Are the Health Impacts of Chicken Farms?

As you can probably guess, chicken farms give rise to a whole host of dangerous health problems.

Antibiotics

Antibiotics are used on chickens for the same reasons humans use them: to prevent or treat infections. Unfortunately, since conditions on factory farms are so filthy, preventative treatment is necessary to ensure disease doesn’t overtake an entire shed of chickens. However, antibiotics are also used on chickens for another, profit-driven reason: to accelerate their growth. Along with selective breeding, antibiotics are part of the reason why chickens grow so large and so fast, causing undue pain that no living being should be forced to endure.

Avian Influenza

The unnatural and endlessly stressful conditions on factory farms are ideal breeding grounds for dangerous diseases that can infect and kill not only chickens but humans, too. Avian influenza is considered to have “pandemic potential,” because it’s capable of zoonotic transmission—meaning it can jump from animals to humans. Avian influenza, also known as bird flu, has infected humans in the past, most notably during the Spanish Flu of 1918, when it killed 50 million people and infected one-third of the world’s population. The risk of future pandemics—something everyone should want to avoid amidst COVID-19—is yet another reason to end factory farming for good.

E. Coli and Salmonella

You’ve likely been told not to eat raw cookie dough. That’s largely due to the E. Coli and Salmonella bacteria that are commonly found on both raw chicken and eggs. The source of these bacteria might turn you off from chicken products once and for all, since they’re found in the intestinal tracts and feces of animals. Millions of people around the world get sick from these bacteria, and occasionally, infections can be fatal.

(Lucky for you, some cookie dough can be eaten raw, so long as it’s free of animal products, making it vegan.)

Virulent Newcastle Disease

Virulent Newcastle Disease may not be a human health concern, but it is a potentially fatal virus that affects chickens in factory farms. This contagious disease targets the digestive, nervous, and respiratory systems of chickens, who can easily succumb to the disease in great numbers on factory farms.

Whichever way you look at it, the way we’re raising chickens for food needs to change.

Which Company is the Biggest Chicken Producer in the US?

There are several big companies in the US that “produce”—as it’s called—chicken meat, including Pilgrim’s Pride, Sanderson Farms, and Perdue Farms. Tyson Foods, the largest poultry company in the US, is known to have built the broken chicken industry—full of all the flaws, pain, suffering, and profit-driven greed you’ve just tried to digest, here.