Chickens

There's nothing quite like the smell of 15,000 fresh born baby chicks straight out of egg factory. This was part of my experience last Christmas in Alabama at a chicken farm. The chicken houses I saw can contain up to 25,000 chickens and the farm had 5 chicken houses for a total of 125,000 chickens. These chicks arrive in blue pallets on a schoolbus from the hatching factory. They arrive on their birthday and have never had a meal yet. When they arrive they are tossed out of the pallets onto the chicken house floor where there are water drips and food for their convenience! The chicks are not harmed in any way when they are tossed which is absolutely amazing to me. Apparently if the chick has already had it's first meal then it is more easily harmed when they land.

The chicks are all female and only take 6 weeks to grow to full-size. Then they're taken back to the factory for processing on big 18 wheeler tractor trailer trucks as big stinky not-cute-at-all chickens. There are no hormones used and because of the new bird flu regulations they have to have chickens tested for disease in every batch.

The temperature and light inside each chicken house has to be carefully regulated otherwise the chickens will die in huge numbers. While I was there one of the breakers for a chicken house blew out and the circulation fans didn't kick in. About 5,000 chickens died of heat exposure.

On the other hand if the temperature gets too cold, the chickens will bunch together and climb on top of each other to keep warm and smother themselves to death. So next time you eat chicken from the grocery market, remember how much the chicken and farmer have gone through to get to your plate!

This post was made by Ben.