2 day old chicks (nasty warning)

[Smotheroffive]

...being crushed alive en masse!!

I know this from films shown in my DCs schools.

AIBU to be so shocked and upset about this, or wondering if enough people know and it doesn't even bother them, or perhaps have no idea this goes on.

I have always tried to buy free range eggs, and bacon, etc, but also organic assuming their standards of animal welfare would prefend such awful treatment of live young.

Does this happen routinely in organic farming too? surely not, or I think I might have to stop buying eggs! AIBU to consider doing that?

[Smotheroffive]

... so in order to keep to the usual annual calving pattern these cows are so very obliging and well behaved aren't they!

[Heyha]

I didn't know cows cycled while lactating, something new every day! I have AI'd my pigs in the past when I've not had a boar on site so completely agree you don't go in there and force the issue 😂

Sheep are interesting too, I keep a primitive breed and a 'normal' breed and there's no point putting the primitive ram in til at least November as the girls just aren't interested. Whereas the big lad had done his job by the end of October!

[Saucery]

It’s to do with where the sheep originated from, isn’t it? So a breed traditionally from colder places ‘know’ not to breed until their lambs will be born when it’s warmer. I either dreamed that or saw it on Countryfile

[Heyha]

Yep you're dead right @saucery ! Had one lamb in July last year, felt sorry for the poor lad really as all the others were two or three months old and getting past the playing stage really!

[Smotheroffive]

I know that the practice of 'forcing' bitches is still rife, and prospective puppy owners wouldn't dream of asking how their puppies were 'farmed'.

If you allow things to happen naturally it removes the need for a 'second forcing'. It's not the worst that happens, but nevertheless abhorrent to my mind and senses.

[Saucery]

Aww, bet he was a proper bouncy pita, Heyha

[Smotheroffive]

Aww bless! Lonesome playful lamb. I want it!

Do you slaughter yours Hayha or send them off for slaughtering. Is one allowed to slaughter their own animals nowadays?

They have to be traced don't they?

[OnlineAlienator]

It's not about cows being obedient for humans - many, many animals produce at least one generation of offspring in a year; cows, horses, deer etc all do this and cows and horses, with such a long gestation, have to conceive while lactating in order to do it. Sheep and pigs dont, because they have shorter gestations.

[Smotheroffive]

I did realise that online it was light-hearted; it was just the way you wrote that in order to keep to the annual calving ....

[Smotheroffive]

Dcats do it too, cows are not peculiar in this.

[MyBestFriendIsAHamster]

This is partly what made me go vegan.

[OnlineAlienator]

Ah sorry im tired and autistic

[MyBestFriendIsAHamster]

Dairy cows suffer all their lives. repeatedly impregnated, calves not allowed to feed, bred for unnatural yield stuffed full of drugs, cruel

I'm always amazed how many people don't seem to realise that cows have to give birth in order to produce milk.

[Heyha]

I think you can slaughter yourself but only you can eat it- you can't even give it away or share it!
Mine do go for meat if we aren't keeping or selling for breeding. I take them to a little family-run abattoir myself as that's the only way I can bear to do it. The primitives don't go until at least 15 months old too so they get two sure which also makes me feel a bit more comfortable with it. They have to have at least one ear tag in, that's true, before they're 12 months old. So I tend to do it when they come in for their annual jab and MOT with the breeding gang as they're about 9 months old by then, they have tiny little ears as babies and because I don't have many and they are a mix of colours I know exactly who is who even when they're older. I can tell some of the girls by their baaa as well #saddo

[Smotheroffive]

Was someone in the thread ignorant of that Hamster ?

Sorry online hope you can catch up with a restful evening and night.

[MyBestFriendIsAHamster]

It was just a general comment.

[Smotheroffive]

I can tell some of the girls by their baaa as well #saddo

I think notsomuch saddo, I think nice you love and know your animals enough.

So, the abbatoir buy them? Have you seen any despatched to know what they do [humanely]?

[Cranky17]

I am not naïve, and clearly the schools are doing a bad job, I am asking questions about whats actually going on.

Schools are doing a shocking job, those egg/chicken companies that sell eggs to schools to show how eggs are hatch also add to the problem as the males are just disposed of I’d fhey can’t find them a home

[Heyha]

Well I've not taken enough to need to sell them yet as the meat is in demand from friends and family luckily. It just covers the cost of keeping the girls if you don't look too closely at the figures

I've not been further with my own than dropping at the door- mine lets them tootle off the trailer in their own time. I've been in from the other side as far as the bit immediately after they stun and kill as well but I've never been present during an actual death. I had one that had to be dispatched at home after an accident though, by the fallen stock guy using a bolt gun, and it was VERY quick so the sheep didn't seem to know anything about it. Having had a goat put down by injection (same as cat/dog etc) I wouldn't say there was much difference from what I observed, the goat wasn't mad on having the needle!

[Heyha]

A lot of the egg hatching is a bit crap, there is one that only does rare breeds so can find a job for a lot of the boys that hatch.

I usually take a batch a year to work for the kids to watch, again rare breeds, a batch is seven eggs for my incubator 😂 so far I've either kept or sold/given away from breeding all the boys that came out. I wouldn't have an issue with rearing them on for my own consumption if necessary though.

[Smotheroffive]

Thanks Heyha
A lot better than the treatment they'd get abroad, or in nature even!

[TSSDNCOP]

I buy my meat direct from a family run farm. They raise and take their own animals to slaughter. The slaughter house is about 50 miles away as it's the one they consider most humane.

There was a lady in there recently having a heated point of view about the way the chickens and other meat were packaged. Her point being the farm should not use plastic wrap, as being no better than the supermarkets.

The farmer pointed out that the wrap was there to stop all the chicken blood spilling onto her car seats. They've tried various other methods, but cling film was simply the most practical.

Not saying you're wrong to be distressed about the male chicks OP, but I'm wondering given the scale of egg farming in the UK alone how many unrequited male chickens there would be in a year, and the cost of keeping them would be, if the practice of destroying them wasn't followed.

[Murinae]

This is how much room each kind of hen gets at different types of farms.

[Heyha]

Good diagram, only thing I'd asked is if 10m2 is truly 'free to roam' though? My friend who does free range but not unrestricted still loses birds to foxes and the odd one even on the road! I buy eggs from who he supplies when mine are off lay, having seen his setup and had 'retired' birds from him that were in as good a nick as mine at home after 18 months in the system. But again I guess it's that sliding scale but free range is easy to find, organic that bit harder.

[Murinae]

I think it means if they have a big field they can only have the equivalent of 1 hen per 10 m2 and not all packed in