Hen or Roo?

[Smartie_Pants]

Oh, and he looks like he still has a ways to grow. When Henrietta died she was about 17 pounds. She was smaller than that when I got her and grew to that size.

 

[bbRedMom]

It just makes me angry. I know what they are bred for, i understand free enterprise, I know I know I know.

But when I look at Buddy, who is so heavy he can barely move, and I look at my sleek, beautiful, bantys, I just get angry and sad, and want to punch someone!

That's it. I'm never buying commercial chicken again. Seriously.

 

[Smartie_Pants]

Going through it once is bad enough, but I am having to do it again. I went to a farmers market this past spring to get some chicks and these on a truck just caught my eye. The hens they had there did not look like cornish crosses, but that's what the chicks turned out to be.

Meet Big Momma:

I promised myself I would NEVER have another cross after Henrietta died, but it looks like that came back to bite me!

 

[Smartie_Pants]

Quote:
It's sickening thinking about they short, terrible lives they are subjected to. When they take them to slaughter, they pack dozens and dozens to a cage, so they end up suffocating each other and when they try to move around it can cause the cages to open and hens to spill out. At one point every truck going to slaughter when right past my house, and always at night. Dozens of dead 20 pound chickens littered the road every morning when we woke up. You know that even though these companies claim not to use hormones and everything, they do. I had an aunt and cousin who worked for Tyso for awhile and this is what they told me:

They inject the embryo in the egg with steriod, then the chicks when they hatch. Then they put it in the food. That plus the natural growth makes them like that.

Now, that may or may not be true but I personally believe it after watching Henrietta. If it does that to the hearts and lungs of the chicken, imagine what it's doing to us.

 

[grandmachicken]

Since I rescued my chickens, I have thought and thought about commercial chicken, and I really don't want anything to do with it anymore! I am a veterinarian, and I knew all about the processing side, we had to spend a day at a processing plant in vet school, and watch as the chickens came in from the trucks and were taken into the plant by conveyor belt.

The problem is, chicken is good, cheap protein for growing kids. I would like to switch over to organic, free range chicken, or raise my own, so that I at least know that they were raised in comfortable and humane conditions. But organic is so expensive!

I really admire you for rescuing Buddy and trying to give him a good life, despite his genetics. The whole poultry industry is just horrific. IMHO.