Male hatchery chicks - where do they go?

[BastyPutt]

We all partake in it. Going to the feed store and see a trough of "sexed" chicks and 40 of those little things running around. But where are the 40 little males that statistically we know exist... or existed.

I am not a PETA warrior, far from it - we butcher a few hundred chickens a year for food. Mainly the roosters that are hatched here.

Reading this, you know the majority of the males are euthanatized and I'm sure very humanely and quickly right after hatching.

But I am ultimately curious what everyone's viewpoint is on this. Should we be supporting hatcheries in this practice? If you no, would you be in a position to raise and butcher roosters?

We hatch our own chicks, and have for years, but not because of this. After learning and reading about it more, I am grateful that we do. We are able to raise the roosters, give them some kind of life and then use them for our family. I understand that we are still essentially doing the same thing as the hatcheries, but there is just something so off in my opinion, about throwing them out because of their sex.

 

[NatJ]

Some of the male chicks get sold. Hatcheries usually price them cheaper than the pullets, and some people buy them to raise for meat.

Some hatcheries use male chicks as "packing peanuts" when shipping small orders of chicks, so they go to one customer or another as freebies.

I think some of the male chicks become food for snake, hawks, and other kinds of zoo animals or unusual pets.

I know there are online sites where you can order frozen mice, rats, chicks, and so forth as food for snakes. I strongly suspect (but do not know for sure) that they are getting male chicks from big hatcheries, rather than running their own breeder flocks and incubators.

 

[Alagirl]

We all partake in it. Going to the feed store and see a trough of "sexed" chicks and 40 of those little things running around. But where are the 40 little males that statistically we know exist... or existed.

I am not a PETA warrior, far from it - we butcher a few hundred chickens a year for food. Mainly the roosters that are hatched here.

Reading this, you know the majority of the males are euthanatized and I'm sure very humanely and quickly right after hatching.

But I am ultimately curious what everyone's viewpoint is on this. Should we be supporting hatcheries in this practice? If you no, would you be in a position to raise and butcher roosters?

We hatch our own chicks, and have for years, but not because of this. After learning and reading about it more, I am grateful that we do. We are able to raise the roosters, give them some kind of life and then use them for our family. I understand that we are still essentially doing the same thing as the hatcheries, but there is just something so off in my opinion, about throwing them out because of their sex.

animal feed.
Chicken meal
I follow a cat sanctuary in the East that feeds those chicks to their cats which consists of wild species and exotics (and a bunch of domestics that are brought in)
So they have Asian Jungle cats which produce Bengals when crossed with domestic cats, Servals I believe, the foundation for Savanna Cats, and a myriad other small and medium sized felines. No Purina for them. Which probably cuts down on the need for supplementation.
Also Raptor keepers and rehab stations.
All those beasties that cannot live on Kale.

 

[BastyPutt]

animal feed.
Chicken meal
I follow a cat sanctuary in the East that feeds those chicks to their cats which consists of wild species and exotics (and a bunch of domestics that are brought in)
So they have Asian Jungle cats which produce Bengals when crossed with domestic cats, Servals I believe, the foundation for Savanna Cats, and a myriad other small and medium sized felines. No Purina for them. Which probably cuts down on the need for supplementation.
Also Raptor keepers and rehab stations.
All those beasties that cannot live on Kale.

See this is excellent. Whether they are butchered at 6 months or euthanized and used for something else productive and sustainable at 1 day old, none the less, I think this is great.

 

[K0k0shka]

smaller operations would have the gaul to risk their livelihood on something like that.

I don't think it would be such a danger to their livelihoods. Most people don't know, or don't care, about what happens to male chicks. Are enough people going to boycott the hatchery to make a difference in their profit margins? People have known about the actual horrors of the mainstream meat/egg/dairy industry long enough, but have they stopped eating meat, eggs or dairy in protest? Not really, or at least not in large enough numbers to make a difference. There's some publicity now with undercover footage, but it's not really making a very big dent. Some problems it uncovers are easier to fix than others. Like "cage free eggs", and even then, the fix isn't really a fix, it's a marketing move that makes consumers feel warm and fuzzy without a real improvement for the animals. Consumers think cage free = happy chickens grazing in a field, when most of the time it means they took the cages away but the density of birds is the same, so now the birds just walk all over each other on an open floor. But it's advertised as a big improvement led by consumer demand. Other problems, like what to do with male chicks, don't have a quick fix like that, neither real nor a marketing trick like the cages. They can sell some alive, but given the large numbers of chicks pumped out, it's just not enough. They'll need to be discarded one way or another until an actual solution comes along - like sexing chicks inside the egg (there's progress being made on that front, which is the big hope of the ag industry which loses a lot of money in male chicks, but that's still pretty far from being a reality). So I think it's unrealistic of consumers to demand every male chick live out its life happily ever after, or else they boycott the business. There just aren't any good large scale alternatives right now.

 

[Mary Poopins Love]

I don't want the chicks to hatch, then be ground up, but I know that it takes a lot of money to raise chickens, It's hard. On one hand, No kill! On the other, What to do?

 

[Mary Poopins Love]

One thing is for certain, I have no doubt the hatcheries practice ethical methods of euthanasia. I don't for a second buy the nonsense of them being abused.

But yes, there is a technical term for it, but they do get put into some kind of a grinder that kills them instantaneously.

Yes, some hatcheries do practice more humane methods, but many still grind

 

[BastyPutt]

Some of the male chicks get sold. Hatcheries usually price them cheaper than the pullets, and some people buy them to raise for meat.

Some hatcheries use male chicks as "packing peanuts" when shipping small orders of chicks, so they go to one customer or another as freebies.

I think some of the male chicks become food for snake, hawks, and other kinds of zoo animals or unusual pets.

I know there are online sites where you can order frozen mice, rats, chicks, and so forth as food for snakes. I strongly suspect (but do not know for sure) that they are getting male chicks from big hatcheries, rather than running their own breeder flocks and incubators.

This makes more sense and certainly a consideration. What do the do AFTER the euthanasia. I suppose it would be apples to apples if they were used for something like this or dog food, or them being butchered later for meat. The idea in both cases being that the life is not wasted.

 

[K0k0shka]

I wouldn't call the grinding humane at all. I've watched videos, it looks as horrific as it sounds, and it's not instant. They are fed into it en masse, piles and piles of bodies as it grinds the ones that get close enough. And even before they reach the grinder, there's a lot of mishandling and fear for the birds. The sexers fling them like trash into a chute, which dumps them onto the conveyor belt where they tumble and roll on top of each other in a pile until they fall into the grinder, a lot of them trying to jump or fly out. Even if the whole trip from the sexer's hands to the grinder is a few seconds, those are some terrifying seconds for the chicks, and some of them get injured on their way through. It's heartbreaking. Maybe if it's a smaller operation that moves smaller numbers of chicks through, it could spare a second or two per chick, so the sexer at least places it down more gently instead of throwing the live chick, that would be something, but the large scale operations are moving thousands of birds and looking to shave seconds off every step of the process, so they throw them instead of placing them down.

 

[BastyPutt]

I don't want the chicks to hatch, then be ground up, but I know that it takes a lot of money to raise chickens, It's hard. On one hand, No kill! On the other, What to do?

One thing is for certain, I have no doubt the hatcheries practice ethical methods of euthanasia. I don't for a second buy the nonsense of them being abused.

But yes, there is a technical term for it, but they do get put into some kind of a grinder that kills them instantaneously.