Humans do some terrible things to animals in the quest for cheap food, but chickens suffer perhaps more than any other farmed animal.
They have the distinction of being sought not only for their meat but also for their eggs.
The scale of their suffering in factory farms around the world is staggering.
Chickens bred for their meat are housed in their thousands in huge sheds which are not cleaned out for their entire lives of about 6 week lives.
The species has been genetically manipulated to grow large at a very rapid, unnatural rate.
The fully grown chickens in the supermarkets are only 6 weeks old.
They are forced to live in their own urine and faeces. Their skin is damaged by urine burning and their lungs are damaged due to the intense ammonia smell.
They suffer heart attacks because of their rapid growth and often have broken legs due to the extraordinary weight of their bodies on their tiny bones. Of course with broken legs, they can’t reach food or water, and they are often cannibalized by other chickens because they can’t fight back.
At ‘harvesting age’, they are grabbed by their legs and crammed into crates, then into trucks, by their thousands, without regard for their fragility. They’re then sent off to slaughter.
Image credit Animal Liberation NSW
There is a huge demand for eggs around the world.
The egg industry chooses to fill this requirement by keeping most chickens in horrific – but cheap – conditions.
These days, most people are aware of the horrors and mistreatment that egg-producing chickens go through in cages, and to their credit, more and more people are refusing to buy cage eggs.
But there are also horrors in the world of cage-free and free-range eggs.
All layer chickens are sexed at one day old, no matter what system the egg-producer fits into – caged, cage-free or free range.
The little roosters are surplus to the egg industry, so they are thrown into crushing machines or gassed, to be recycled for pet food or as food for the meat chickens.
The females (the layers) are placed in cramped sheds until they are old enough to become layers.
Layer hens have been selectively bred to produce 300 eggs a year – this is not natural for birds and places huge strain on their bodies.
The poor birds are often so stressed that they peck and pull out the feathers of other birds, resulting in painful injuries.
They can even resort to cannibalism.
To reduce injuries from feather pecking, the birds’ beaks are trimmed when they are young – another procedure which causes life-long pain and makes eating more difficult.
Globally, 86% of layer hens are kept in cages, meaning they are unable to exhibit any natural behaviours. Each shed contains parallel rows of tiers of cages.
A single shed can hold up to 100,000 individuals. The cages give each hen the space of an A4 piece of paper.
Hens in a cage system will never stand on solid ground, as the cages have sloped wire floors, allowing the eggs to roll out and their waste to be collected on a conveyor belt below them. The wire floor causes deep, open sores and swelling.
They will never stretch their wings, dust bathe, explore, or forage.
Image credit Animal Liberation NSW
A cage-free farm means that hens live inside a shed with up to 30,000 others. They may be given nesting boxes and perches, which allow them to exhibit some of their natural behaviours.
While this housing system does allow the birds to walk around, it still treats them as machines and ignores their natural social structures.
Like in the cages, the floor is normally not solid, so that the sheds do not have to be cleaned as the chicken’s waste falls below them.
Image credit Animal Liberation NSW
Free-range systems are the same as cage-free, however, the hens are sometimes allowed to go outside during daylight hours.
Unfortunately, the sheds are so crowded that it can often be impossible for all of the hens to make it outside.
In many free-range farms, the outdoor areas have no shade or shelter, which stresses the birds, as they instinctively seek shelter to avoid predators.
Free-range is not the chicken paradise that egg-producers would have us believe!
Image credit Animal Liberation NSW