Dewing what does it mean??

[Opa]

When the chick is first hatched they will clip off the last bone from the wing. This is the bone upon which the primary flight feathers grow. This procedure renders the bird flightless.

 

[MuckyPuppy]

Poor chicks.

 

[Gerry2011]

Double YUCK

Is this a common practice?

 

[Ridgerunner]

If you clip the flight feathers, they will grow back every time the chicken molts. Chicks molt twice before they become adults. Imagine raising a few thousand chickens on pasture behind movable electric fences and trying to catch thousands of chicks as they start to regrow feathers after a juvenile molt so you can clip the wing feathers again.

This is a practice I don't do. I don't need it the way I manage my chickens. Some people geld horses so they can keep more than one male horse. Some people clip puppies tails. Some people circumcise male human children. Some people even spay and neuter dogs and cats! How cruel and barbaric.

 

[Opa]

Many sound and humane animal husbandry procedures appear to be barbaric to those for who raise birds and animals as a hobby and consider them to be pets. For instance, serious hog farmers normal clip the tails and canine teeth of baby pigs to deter canabalism. Which is more humane? This quick procedure or allowing them to devour each others tails. We should condemn something as cruel if we have never been in the position to need it.

 

[Gypsy07]

Quote:
You are right about not condemning things we don't have personal experience of, but in my own experience, most things we do to animals are for our own convenience and not for their own good. Chicks kept in a big enough space won't need debeaking, as they won't be so crammed together that they start pecking each other. The same goes for piglets. Cannibalism happens mostly when they're overcrowded. It's not just an either/or choice of clipping their teeth or allowing them to devour each others' tails. There's also a third option of improving their living standards to reduce the chances of it happening in the first place, thus removing the need for the clipping altogether. Of course, I do know this isn't commercially viable. Animals kept as pets or as a hobby are usually kept to much higher standards of welfare as the commercial element is largely absent. As soon as you start toplace profit first, welfare naturally suffers. That's just the way things are. But we shouldn't kid ourselves on that all of the 'good husbandry' things done to animals are also sound and humane.

 

[PTFowl]

Quote:
X2

 

[MuckyPuppy]

Now, pigs are something I do know a little about as my parents raised them and ours never ate each other's tails. The only one that lost a tail was because of infection. It was a runt and the only "pet" out of the pigs. Ours had a huge area in the woods.

 

[Achickenwrangler#1]

Yikes- I read it like dewing and not de-wing, and wondered, hmmm what does that have to be..never knew, wow, I guess you can learn something new every day - I'm going to go out and tell all the chicks about this so they'll know how lucky they are, could have been dewed.

 

[Opa]

Gypsy, I agree with you, however, most people cannot raise their own food and as such food and animals must be raised as economically as possible. This demand and need governs most farm practices. While this is not ideal for the animals it is necessary.

This post was intended to answer a legitimate question not as a discussion of what constitute cruelty. Since the question has been answered I am going to ask the moderators to close this thread. Thank you everyone for your imput.