Male hatchery chicks - where do they go?

[BastyPutt]

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.

Very well said here and a lot of excellent points.

Just to be clear, I am certainly not calling for a boycott. That would lead to not only males but unsold females being sent down the hatch. That could be the WORST possible solution.

I was reading about a 2020 project where there was some $$ put toward research on breeding or fertilizing for sex. Which if it is done naturally wouldn't be too bad, but I think we would be going down another slippery slope of morality there.

 

[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.

 

[BastyPutt]

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

With that said, aside from the horror of the notion of the method, and how someone could send probably thousands of chicks a day to their demise that way, do you believe it would be considered non-humane?

We are assuming of course that it happens immediately, like in well under a second.

 

[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 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.

Yikes. Thankful to have not seen those videos. That sounds horrendous

 

[akroberts1085]

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.

That's horrible . How can people be so heartless? I would prefer to raise a rooster versus kill him at birth. That's just so not right or good. I am going to try to find a rooster with very good temperament. I had a bad experience with a rooster so I haven't ever wanted a rooster but to know about this it's not good. Thank you for the info.