Parent Broiler Chickens September 2007

The broiler chicken industry (birds raised for their flesh) is the largest abuse of animals on the planet.
53 billion animals are raised and killed every year for humans to eat and 51 billion of these animals are broiler chickens. The suffering is astronomical and the environmental destruction caused by the impact of breeding/feeding/transporting and processing billions of animals each year is crippling the earth. ALV's Openrescue team saved six of these parent 'broilers' on Friday, September 7, 2007 at a massive broiler breeders complex near Melbourne.

Most people will never have heard of broiler breeders.  They are the parents of the most eaten creature in the world - broiler chicks... who are slaughtered at only 6-8 weeks of age even though they weigh around 2.5 kilos - more than adult laying hens.  The parents are kept in the same crowded conditions as their offspring but their suffering is much longer and more intense.  The hens and roosters spend a year in enclosed dim sheds living on the build up of their own feces, the smell is overwhelming and the floor becomes compacted into 'hills and valleys'. The birds are only fed every other day, it's called "skip-a-day-feeding', if fed everyday they would become too large to mate or move. The hens are repeatedly mounted by the roosters and their backs become red and raw from the continual mating, many hens loose the feathers at the back of their heads as the roosters clamp on to this area with their beaks when jumping onto the hens. The hens lay their eggs in nesting boxes inside the sheds which are manually collected by workers every day, so when a hen gets broody and instinctually sits on her egg it's quickly taken away from her.

Our openrescue team has inspected this parent breeding shed two times, the first time in November 2006 when the birds were first put into the shed and again on Sept 7, 2007.  The conditions were appalling, many birds had obviously died, others had red raw backs, many suffered ammonia blisters on their claws from standing in their own faeces, others displayed erythema on their underbellies, again from sitting on their own accumulated droppings. Young roosters had been introduced to increase productivity, further debilitating the already severely exhausted hens.

The easy way you can help these birds, the environment and your own health is to go vegan!

ALSO WATCH

Video footage of the rescue

THINK CARE ACT

Sadly many people believe that it's ok to eat free-range or organically produced animal products. But the truth is that often these methods of farming make little real difference for the animals.

The hens shown above also supply the chicks that many organic and free-range producers use!

The only way to stop the abuse of animals is to vote with your dollar and never purchase animal products of any kind.

govegan.com.au