factory farms in washington state. PLZ HELP

FactoryFarmsAreRrong · Jun 27, 2010

i am looking to rescue 1-2 factory farm hens, but i m having a lot of trouble locating a chicken factory farm in Washington state. i am going to keep a jurnal of her recovory, and vidio diary of her progress, and put it on youtube for the world to see. i am also planing to write a news paper artical about it. so please, will you help me find factory farm in Washington, Idaho, or Oragon.

bnentrup · Jun 27, 2010

Is your goal to show that small-scale farming is RIGHT? or do you feel that raising chickens in the backyard for meat/food is wrong also?

I agree with you on the conditions of the commercial chicken farming being not only inhumane to chickens but to people too! The results of their output is often ridden with extreme levels of bacteria or bleach/ammonia traces that kill the bacteria. In the eyes of USDA, I am sure they feel that traces of those chemicals is acceptable for our health.. but not for me or my family.

Egg-laying production houses dispose of SO MANY cockerel chicks every single day (chopping em up in a grinder). I cannot imagine that with the hundreds of thousands of members here that there would not be a market for those chicks @ .25-.50 each. The problem is the QTY of the un-needed cockerels. They hatch thousands per day and some even more!

THE BEST APPROACH for you, would not to start a fire and watch it burn but rather have a solution to the problem.... IE A NONPROFIT organization that is HELPING the commercial houses take care of this issue. Your company would arrange pickup of the un-desired cockerels, or outdated leghorn hens, and find homes for them. Those who you give the birds to would repay at a set rate or by donation to your organization. Groups could be established across the United states in strategic locations close to where the largest factories are located. I am sure that the outdated hens or unused cockerels both have a monetary value to the factories (fertilizer) - therefore, some compensation would be needed to be returned to the factories, or recommend a tax write-off for their donated birds.

Sunny Side Up · Jun 27, 2010

As long as there is such a huge demand for cheap eggs & chicken there will be these factory farms. I think you've got a good idea to bring more awareness of the conditions in which these food items are produced. But I do not think the solution is to attempt to rescue every spent battery hen, nor every White Leghorn cockerel chick. There are Just. Too. Many. Of. Them. For many of those spent hens, unfortunately, the best thing for them is to send them to The Other Side of the Road, to end their misery. Others will require a lot of care & attention that should more practically be spent on more productive chickens. And in the White Leghorn breed we've got a super-efficient egg laying hen, and a breed that can be feather-sexed at hatch. But sadly, there is little use for the cockerels, they are very inefficient in feed-to-meat conversion. It's not nice to think about, but there's little other use for them but to cull them quickly right away.

I think you're on the right track! But perhaps you could direct your intellect & energies towards these two things:
1. Making conditions better for commercially-kept chickens while also
2. Making inexpensive eggs & chicken available for human consumption so that even the poorest people can benefit from their protein and nutrients.

I wish you success!