Beak cropping

[Bandit]

I had a question about why people crop the beaks of chickens and if they will grow back. Also, I have heard of people putting a ring through the chicken's notrils and under the top half of the beak. What is the reason behind doing this kind of thing? Isn't it cruel?

 

[Thortherooster]

it is called debeaking, it is offen used by the egg industry and the meat industry so the chicken can not harm eachother as badly....



this might help...



Speech and debate
Period 4 Chickens…….
Let’s just use our imaginations, just for a moment, so picture this; imaging standing all day long possibly, and to make it even worse have metal mesh wires as your ground and due to this your feet have blood blisters that never heal. You can’t extended your arms and when you try you wings get torn, if you get stuck in any way you will end up dying just centimeters away from your water, all you hear is other people screaming of unhappiness, you see many other people dead, you are hungry, it stinks so badly that your eyes burn from the ammonia in the air. You are on the verge of going blind. As soon as you were born you were picked up and sheared off part of your beak with a hot iron. Your brothers were taken away and were thrown into trash bags, because they were useless alive. Well, folks, welcome to the life of a battery hen; which is a hen in the egg producing industry. Just for the moment of imagination you have already felt some pain.
These eggs are needed and I understand that, eggs are an important ingredient for many things such as cakes, bread, cookies, donuts, scones and many other fine treats. 300 million hens languish in cages in the U.S. alone. These hens live in cages so abusive that many countries have banned the use of them, but sadly the United States continues to use them. Hens are usually kept eight or nine to a cage; long tiers of these cages are built one upon another. These cages in some cases have been reported to be 12 cages high. In sheds that hold thousands of chickens. Each hen has the space of 67 square inches which is less than the space of a standard sheet of paper. A hen needs 72 square inches just to stand up straight and 303 square inches to be able to spread and flap their wings. On average a full grown chicken needs 2.5 square feet. Another down side to these cages is if anything is dropped it goes right down to the cages below it, so excrement falls until it will eventually fall on another chicken, or in a cage and a chicken gets it in their feet; which increases the spreading of diseases.
On an average day, an average hen produces an egg , but the factory farmers make it so the light are on for 5 hours and then off for 3 hours. They make it so this occurs 3 times daily. So by putting the hens on this cycle increases the amount of laying per day, and the chickens day would only be 8 hours. Another thing that is done with lights in order for the chickens to produce more eggs is long periods of stimulated daylight. Also periodic forced molting creates an additional laying cycle. During this time, hens are kept in the darkness and put on the “starvation diet” which is a reduced calorie feed; or they are just starved altogether for up to two weeks. For those of you that do not know chickens are almost always hungry, and some will actually eat until they explode. These hens are not provided with any nesting materials, and according to the book “Raising Chickens” the hens need a nesting material. Also these hens are never given the opportunity to be a mother, this inability to engage in instinctive behavior causes great frustration. Battery hens live like this for up to two years. When the battery hens are ready for slaughter they are so unhealthy that instead of being human food when they are slaughtered they are put into dog and cat food. In 2003 a public outcry brought attention to a California ranch that was reported to have discarded thousands of live hens using a wood chipper. No charges were brought because, as it turns out, this is a common industry practice.
“I personally believe that the average battery hen is worse than the average veal calf. I think it’s probable that a forkful of egg comes at a cost greater suffering than a forkful of veal…. For people making a switch to vegetarianism out of concern for animals, I, therefore believe that the first food to give up should be, not meat, but eggs” this is a quote from Erik Marcus, making a comparison in his book “Meat Market: Animals, Ethics, and Money”
As you know there is not just one purpose for chickens when it comes to factory farming, there is also the meat industry. Chickens in the meat industry are called broiler chickens. These chickens go through a lot of misery, just to end up on our plates, but in some ways their lives are better than battery hens. One thing a bit better is that if you are a male you will not killed. Broiler chickens still suffer crowding, and have poor ventilation in sheds. The shed are filled with 20,000 chickens of the same gender and age. Each broiler chicken is given less than a square foot, so hardly that any floor is actually visible. Meat chickens according to the book “Raising Chickens” chickens from 2 weeks to 10 weeks need at least 1 square foot. Due to selective breeding and growth promoting antibiotics, 90 percent of broiler chickens suffer painful leg disorders. Some even collapse under their own weight. They also suffer from heart and lung problems. If a human were to grow like these chickens at the age of 2 we would weight an amazing 349 pounds. These chickens are not normally in cages but instead must walk over each other to get to food and water. The chickens are unable to roam, to scratch, or, indeed, to avoid each other at all. Their instincts to live a hierarchical community are not possible; so therefore social tensions rise.
Broiler chickens are trucked of for slaughter at only the age of 6 to 8 weeks, catching their first breath of fresh air only to be killed. These trucks offer no protection from extreme temperatures. Many chickens die while they are on their way to the slaughter facilities. The most efficient of these facilities kill some 8,400 chickens per hour, the result of a high degree machine. We are all aware of the foster farm commercials talking about plumping. Plumping is injecting the chicken with a saltwater and seaweed. Some chicken has saltwater as 15 percent of its weight. If the average family of four eats 4 chickens a week; annually they spend $103.90 on saltwater and seaweed. Also if a family of 8 like my own family eats one chicken a week they spend a total of $51.95 on saltwater and seaweed.
There are many physical things that go wrong with chickens that live in factory farms. Such as chickens lose their feathers, because of the cages, and also the stress causes them to lose feathers also. When chickens get stressed they lose their feathers, so these chickens are close to bald so therefore it is easier to get an infection. Due to the cages they also get many skin abrasions. Also the ammonia in the air stings the chickens’ eyes and due to this some chickens go blind. They are always surrounded by excrement which is unhealthy and therefore easier to get an infection. These chickens are unable to exercise and the constant egg production leaches calcium from their bones; these two factors cause severe osteoporosis. This leads to broken bones and great pain for the chickens. Another health problem is that salmonella out breaks among the chickens. This can be passed on to humans who eat the contaminated chickens. Chickens that live in cages have constant cuts on their feet. Chickens that live in these stressful situations will peck and fight with each other. The “solution” to this in the eyes factory farmers is debeaking chicks shortly after they are hatched. This is to minimize damage that the chickens are capable to doing to each other. This is an assembly line fashion. The top beak is cut off with a hot blade.
Through the 1950’s even chickens raised for slaughter were kept in the traditional, small coops of 60 or so, and could do what they wanted free range. But modern day farming practices give chickens no opportunity to behave according to their nature. Quite the contrary the reality of the life and death factory farmed chickens those used for eggs and those used for meat.
As in all factory industries, chicken production is designed for maximum profits, with these goals, regard for the welfare of these animals. The luxury of these chickens reduces profits unless the extra costs can be passed onto the consumer. A man today can grow not hundreds, nor thousands, but tens, of thousands, of confined chickens with very little labor. Due to this we less frequently see free range chickens. The result in this is overcrowding, disease, high death rates, and observable unhappiness.
Chickens who live a life in nature or a farmyard would be richly feathered, would be sociable, have cleansing dust baths with flock mates, range ancestral jungles and fields with flock mates, eating plants, earthworms, and insects from sunrise to dusk. Exercise daily and express their true nature. Be able to perch in a tree, run around, and decide when to go to bed. They would be able to have a day judge by the sun and not artificial lights.
Toward a better future movements are a foot across the globe to improve conditions for chickens and other poultry animals. The European Union has agreed to abolish the use of battery cages by 2012. The Humane Society of the United States and other organizations are pushing for such a law, and various states and communities in the United States have passed or are considering similar laws. And there have been other successes. In 2000, McDonald’s Corp. announced new policies that mandate that their suppliers increase space for caged laying hens and stop using forced molting at the facilities that produce their eggs; they also plan to phase out the practice of debeaking. In March 2007 another fast-food giant, Burger King, promised to implement new animal-welfare policies that include provisions for buying a certain percentage of its eggs from cage-free producers and some of its chickens from producers that use more-humane slaughter methods. The supermarket chains Whole Foods and Wild Oats have also moved away from using and selling eggs from caged chickens.
Meanwhile, vegetarians, vegans, and animal-welfare organizations continue to emphasize that meat and egg consumption are not necessary for anyone’s health and that people concerned about animals and ethics should give strong consideration to stop eating eggs..
May 4, 2007, was International Respect for Chickens Day, an annual event launched in 2005 by the nonprofit organization United Poultry Concerns (UPC) to “celebrate the dignity, beauty and life of chickens and to protest against the bleakness of their lives in farming operations.” On that day, volunteers in the United States and Canada created displays, handed out information, and took other actions to publicize the miserable conditions in which billions of chickens raised for food spend their lives. UPC was established to address the plight of domesticated fowl used for food production. As UPC puts it, “These birds are the largest number of abused warm-blooded animals in the world. Along with the billions of birds who are slaughtered for ‘food’ each year, millions more suffer in laboratories, get dumped in animal shelters, and die miserably in poultry houses without anyone knowing that they ever lived.”
By now you probably think, that I’m crazy; but I love my chickens. To me chicken are like a dog or cat to you. I am often amazed by my chickens, even though I have had them for 7 months. Surprisingly they are highly intelligent, very talkative, and they have many other abilities I would have ever thought they could do. I surprises me how a simple bug can make them so distracted, and I single cheetos puff can entertain them for hours. I love to see them come running after a long day at school just because I said “chicken, chicken, chicken”. It is very funny when my family and I are eating outside; and my rooster Thor and several of his ladies will come running, and stand next to the dog and beg. Chickens are something that makes me happy, and they are that special thing that makes me get up in the morning. Literally my roosters crow their butts off in the morning. I love my chickens, and I do not understand how people can treat chickens the way that they do. So next time you have to buy some eggs, or chicken, where ever do you research. Remember always get the free range or just support your local farmer that treat their chickens right. They maybe just a chicken, but I love them.

 

[redhen]

It hurts them badly. their beak is full of nerves.. kinda like our fingertips..