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no, there aren't hormones added directly to chickens, which is one of the things that make them such a wonderful food source for backyard farmers to work with. the problem is that there are hormones being transferred to your flock through their food, as well as chemical substances that affect hormones in their (and your) bodies. you don't need to inject hormones into your chickens to create a problem.
think of this example: DDT was widely used as a pesticide up until the 1970s. it was spectacularly effective in controlling insect populations and was important in ridding Europe and the US of malaria. but the problem was that it was killing a lot more than insects. like, eagles.
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now, chickens were not as susceptible to DDT as birds of prey. the point, however, is that there is never a fail safe way to know that the chemicals used on crops today won't have a terrible impact on the health of your flock and yourself down the road.
and those chemicals sprayed on crops don't just go away. they build up in the soil and run off to contaminate someone else's land and pollute the water table. DDT can stay in the soil for 30 years and is still found in almost all human blood samples even though it's use was banned in the early 1970s. and notice how this "pesticide" really effectively killed cats? which significantly increased the populations of rodents, who are disease carries?
there just has to be a point where we, the consumers, start to realize that every single decision that is made in Agribusiness is important to our own lives. and the best way to speak out against this type of farming practice is to speak with your wallets.
eta: i know technology and standards are a lot higher than they were when DDT was being used, but that just isn't a good enough argument that pesticides, herbicides, and the like should be still be used.
