What happens to all the Rooster chicks?????

[donrae]

And there lies the solution......and only one way to get there. Jesus Christ is the solution to all the problems mentioned here.

Oh I told myself I wasn't going to post on this thread cause it's just trouble waiting to happen but I can't let this go by without a big Amen.


I am one of the cancer patients. I was grateful for my solution, brutal though it was. I was not at all ready to die, and my kids weren't ready to lose me. God wasn't ready for me yet, thankfully. But without my faith in Jesus, I might not have done so well. The providers were constantly amazed at my good attitude during my long incarcerations......I mean hospitalizations

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[Lisa Wood]

Incredibly well said! 

"In the wild" excess male birds, and also the females, are often eaten as chicks by other animals....and, yes, they are often eaten while they are screaming, some are crushed so quickly they cannot utter a sound.  Eventually ALL the birds living in the wild will die, be it screaming at the teeth and claws of another creature or quietly of illness....never of old age, that's for sure.  They are eaten before they can get to the death from old age.  

Shutting the eyes and ears to the facts of food production in this world does not make it go away and the best one can do is to undertake their very own food production so as to insure it's done as humanely as possible.   Eating eggs comes with a huge responsibility and one of those is being able to kill or recognize that killing is necessary in that species in order for you to have your morning eggs.  If one is not killing their own spent hens or extra roosters they cannot very well criticize how others are doing it, as it has to be done no matter what....whether one abstains or is horrified about it or not, animals need a humane death if they are being kept by us humans. 

Death is a fact of life and with maturity comes the realization of that.  Don't like chicks getting ground up?  Raise your own and kill the extra roosters to use for your own consumption.  Roosters are a necessary byproduct of egg production and that cannot be avoided. 

The tender mercies in the animal kingdom, IMO, are the carnivores who kill as quickly as possible. Some eat alive, from the back, side, where ever. Of course I watch Animal Planet. I have seen Lions and Hyenas do it. Lions especially males taking over a territory. The looser suffers horribly. I TRY to stay in touch with reality. LOL! But even I cannot watch this.
But I dont think we are off the hook to treat animals and people humanely. We are people, so hopefully we don't run around acting like animals.
However, I can site many many instances where we fall way short of this goal. Personaly, I feel that the wide array and selection of cruelty on very many different species, both domestic and wild, would allow my mind to focus somewhere else. I would work for battery hens before baby roos enduring a very quick death.
Another point to consider, is animals do not see the loss of a limb or death the way we do. They do not fear death. The live in the now, so they do not project that far into the future. I have had more than one beloved dog look me in rhe eye and ask for it.
Lisa

 

[windyhawk]

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/04/africa/chickens-africa-gates/

Quote:

I am not big on some of the Gates' causes but this one seems notable. Hope it helps and is well managed.

 

[azjustin]

Do you mind if I ask, what is correct ratio in your experience? More Roos?
Lisa

I'm probably going to get flak for this, but:

When we hatch out our reds, it's easily 60/40 females/male. This is based on wing feather sexing (they were sold to us with that specific trait, but I know not all of them will have it still), early tail feathers, general appearance at 3-4 weeks (that's when most of them go to other homes), and feedback from people that have bought our chicks locally.

Maybe we just got lucky with genetics, but I'm fairly skeptical of the 50/50 theory. I know that in nature that's the case, but I'm pretty convinced chickens are far from that now. Maybe that's why sometimes the ratio is sometimes reversed?

 

[Birds of a Feather]

 

[Sinar]

It looks like scientists in Germany has developed a way to tell what sex an egg after a few days of incubation, the male eggs are then not incubated any further and used for pet food. This might be a viable commercial practice over the next few years, and would end the killing of newly hatched male chicks from egg laying lines.

I hope this eventually becomes standard practice in the future in large commercial hatcheries.

 

[Shadrach]

Sooooo I'm just wondering... what happens in the wild? If there is 50/50 ratio male to female, what happens in the land of birds that are free in the world? It seems that some birds are monogamous and mate for life. And some, like the birds in New Guinea and Australia, the girls just line up and the boys flip their fancy feathers, sing and dance until those girls are mesmerized into allowing the boys in, or else they fly away saying "Naaaah, jus' not feeling' it." The boy's are deflated, but try try again. Nobody seems to need to grind the boys up alive in a chopper. Really? someone said it only took a minute or two? I wonder how the people in the gas chambers would have related to that statement. But they didn't hear the screaming, and if you know chickens at all... they are not quiet when they are threatened.

But even more than that, it makes us monsters! Closing our eyes isn't very effective - we can't unknown this now. I heard that roos can live happily together in a bachelor pad. Do they have to be a commodity for us to be able to let them live? Maybe there should be a Roo Resort that can be factored into the price of our eggs or something. Can't we come up with something more humane? Our delicious, versatile eggs are the best bargain we've ever had! We should pay back if we can.

Jungle fowl tend to live in small groups and often in pairs (male and female)
Many free range game fowl will adopt a similar arrangement.
The natural arrangement like with many creatures is 1:1. It's people like us who keep chickens that have messed this arrangement up, primarily because roosters don't lay eggs.