How old are chickens when they’re sent to a battery cage farm?
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Question by Daniel: How old are chickens when they’re sent to a battery cage farm?
I need to know how old chickens are when they’re sent to a battery cage farm or how lon they’re in one for thnx 😀
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3 Responses to How old are chickens when they’re sent to a battery cage farm?
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proly chicks
borntodance
February 13, 2013 at 9:21 pm
First thing to realise, if you didn’t already know, is that egg production and meat chicken production are two completely separate industries, and only egg layers are kept in battery cages.
Layer type chicks are reared from day old chicks (from the hatchery incubators) to 18 weeks of age, shortly before they start laying, at separate rearing farms. Some of these use floor rearing systems, big sheds with wood shavings on the floor and heating systems. Baby chicks need to be kept very warm, and the temperature in the buildings is gradually lowered as the birds grow, and have less need for heat. There are also cage rearing systems, which are quite big and complicated cages, which have to be adjusted several times during the period from tiny chicks to almost adult birds.
At 18 weeks the birds are transferred to battery cage buildings, always on a separate site, but sometimes owned by the same company, and sometimes sold to a different company. They are in the cages for about a year, sometimes longer, depending on market conditions, such as the differences in prices between small and big eggs. Old hens lay bigger eggs, but less of them, than younger hens. When cleared from the battery sheds, almost all of them are sold for pet food or low grade human consumption products, such as chicken soup.
Meat chickens (‘broilers’) are all reared on wood shavings/floor system heated buildings, which is necessary because they are still essentially very large chicks when they go offf for slaughter at only about 7 or 8 weeks.
Breeding flocks of both egg type and meat type chickens are kept in buildings which are more like a very large version of a traditional hen house.
DaveS
February 13, 2013 at 9:28 pm
7 weeks, it take 6 to grow them with special hormone feeds. Then another week to clean the mess out of them. They get sent to slaughter house section, and some parts go to the store for our food. The leftovers get sent back to the feed maker section and made into feed. Very nasty thing really.
jeremy
February 13, 2013 at 10:19 pm