Commercial Egg production

[Tutter]

Quote:
Yes, I haven't seen 60,000 chickens being raised, but where I used to live I did see several thousand hens. I don't even know if they were meat, or egg birds.

They were outdoors in large pens which looked like horse areas, and there were metal roofs overhead.

They were crowded, to be sure, but had room to move around.

Wish I could remember where, it was so long ago, and we were just driving by. In any case, that would be nice, fresh air, room to move around and peck.

Just an observation I'd almost forgotten about.

 

[Wolf-Kim]

Settin'_Pretty :

When you outlaw the battery pens and the growers move those birds out onto pasture, then what do you do about rain washing that waste into streams and polluting them?
The waste is managed as it is right now.

What do the battery farms and the broiler houses do with the manure now? I know around here it is bought, mixed with water, put into a tractor and sprayed over farmer's fields anyway. I've seen it go from the farmer's fields the water supply, it might as well come from healthier birds.

The difference would be that you cannot put 60,000 birds pastured or cage free(because the birds are kept on one level and not stacked) in the same density that you can caged. Because the density would be lower, you wouldn't have to routinely feed antibiotics, which are a natural disaster waiting to happen.

I'm not worried about the animal feces in the water supply as much as the disease and routine antibiotics that come out of battery houses. The birds only use 20% of those antibiotics they're fed, the other 80% ends up in the feces, and now on our crops.

Just because the cage system is outlawed it does not mean that companies are forced to free range their poultry. You still have the option of keeping them in broiler-style operations, which is what the "Cage Free" eggs come from now and then there is the Pastured poultry style that you mentioned.

I understand what your point is that we shouldn't just do something without thinking of the consequences. I think the consequences of switching to any non-battery system outweighs the current consequences of using today's battery system.

-Kim​

 

[Beekissed]

I agree completely. I live in an area with a high concentration of commercial poultry houses. The whole area is covered in a plague of flies. The growers keep sheds of chicken litter, from where they clean out the poultry houses. The flies are literally squirming over these piles, laying their eggs. Then the farmers spread it on the fields and a whole new generation of disease spreaders are hatched and migrate to our homes, cars, places of business, etc. I used to think that Moses and God sure had some wimpy plagues....flies? frogs? Well, the flies are driving us mad here. Imagine trying to eliminate thousands of flies each day from your home, driving to work batting hundreds of flies out of your face so you can drive, bleaching down the walls of your home on a daily basis so the bloody fly smears won't become a permanent fixture, watching all the animals in complete misery from the pestilence of the flies. All the stores have sold out of fly swatters and fly strips! This is not an exaggeration! I can't even convey to you how many millions of flies we are dealing with right now.

If we are going to have a manure problem, lets at least have some healthy manure that isn't full of chemicals and drugs and isn't stockpiled until the choking stench is spread on the fields next to my home. How about manure that is spread out and tilled into the soil by the chickens themselves....not large sheds of fly incubators waiting to pass on the myriad diseases spawned in these overcrowded, unhealthy premises!

 

[Wolf-Kim]

I'm very sorry to hear about your situation BeeKissed, it sounds aweful. We have alot of the commercial houses around here, I think they are mostly turkey, but we have both. We have a large chicken processing plant within an hour of here, and a large turkey plant(The House of Raeford) within 15 minutes. The flies aren't too bad here, the turkeys can be heard up to a mile away and smelled further on those hot summer days.

The broiler chicken houses around here, keep the manure piled up under shelters as well, but anyone and everyone is welcome to come and get it. Farmers use it as fertilizer and my friends and family use it as cheap(free) fertilizer for the gardens.

I think with any manure, piling it up is a bad idea. The manure doesn't dry well if it's stacked into piles 15ft. high. The moisture adds to the smell. I think it is far best to spread it in the fields, where it can dry and decompose quickly. I do not stack my horse manure, stacked manure is what really stinks and attracts flies, I spread it out. I do not have issues with smells or flies. It's the main reason I free-range my birds, because they enjoy doing to the work for me(walking through the pasture kicking and spreading manure piles). LOL. My good little egg-laying manure spreaders are a great blessing.

-Kim

 

[Settin'_Pretty]

If they are piling it up outside then they are doing exactly what I was warning about in my post, it would be the same as birds raised in mass outside.

I have a brother in law with 3 broiler houses and a friend with 2 houses.
Waste is taken out of the houses with bobcats, loaded on spreader trucks, and taken directly to farm fields and incorporated into the soil right then.
Neither of them pile it up outside.

I've seen broiler production all the way through from day old chicks to being loaded on the truck from the chicken plant headed for the store.
In other words from the grower house, to the processing plant, out the other door of the processing plant, to the dinner table.
The growing conditions just aren't as bad as most people make it out to be.

Commercial egg production I haven't seen on a grand scale.
For one, it was my understanding they aren't allowed to sell eggs from birds that are on antibiotics, can anyone show me different?

 

[Wolf-Kim]

When I researched for my persuasive speech on the battery hens, there were more than on site that warned about the antibiotics. Most of them read, that the commercial producers feed antibiotics on a regular basis because that seems to be the only way to keep the hens alive in the larger(more careless) battery farms.

If you would like, I can see if I can find those sites again today. LOL. Now I'm wishing I hadn't deleted that paper, I could just use my sources page.

Here is a site(non-PETA) that talks about the issue. Even gives the statistic that 100% of battery hens recieve antibiotics. The part about the battery hens starts in paragraph 7(that way you don't need to read the whole thing).

http://www.wesleyan.edu/wsa/warn/eon/campaign/resolution.html

Even if the farm were not "suppose" to be selling the eggs, it's not like todays food markets are heavily moderated. Sick cattle aren't "suppose" to be slaughtered yet there have been processing plants caught dragging cattle(the cattle were so ill, they could not walk) to the killing pen with forklifts, hoping the cattle will stay alive just long enough to be killed by the plant.

Sometimes I wish I could afford my own farm and just raise all my food and meat. LOL. Isn't that the dream?

-Kim

 

[hooligan]

I too, have read that hens are fed antibiotics to keep them alive and able to produce. Its in the feed that the companies give to the 'farmers'. Same for broiler birds, and I know several ppl who have broiler houses so I know that one for sure.

 

[Settin'_Pretty]

hooligan,
The two people/farms I know in the broiler business do not feed medicated feeds.
Just because you have "read" that's it's being done is not cause to condemn an entire industry.
Why not call the usda and ask if it's allowed by law, and if it is petition to have that changed.

Wolf-Kim,
So what we have then is a whole industry being persecuted and accused because some individuals do it wrong, according to some internet site?

That's where I was thinking this was headed, which is why I jumped on hooligan earlier in this thread, (my posts were removed)

The system we have is far from perfect, I'm sure, but it's not as bad as animal rights activists would have you believe, and it's feeding billions of people.

I thought it was unfair the way colored egg farmer was jumped on almost the minute he posted, when he seems to be trying to improve the system.

 

[hooligan]

SP, I know four families that have broiler houses (as I stated above) and their feed has ab's in it, it comes to them that way.

 

[DuckLady]

My family owned egglaying farms int he 40's and 50's. They agreed that the chickens were crowded and my aunts hated how they were treated. My grandfather regretted it but he had a family to feed.

This is why I don't buy store eggs and have my ducks and chickens who are spoiled rotten to provide for me. I also sell the extras at a price that is affordable so that people unable to have chickens in their yards or apartments can help to NOT support the egg industry.

All we any of us can do is change what we can when we can where we can.