So true. Hatcheries and slaughterhouses are where the real cruelty happens, but organic farmers never talk about where they get their hens, what they do with them when they can't produce anymore or what happens to all the roosters. They couldn't make a profit at all if they were raising all chickens from birth to natural death. Chickens can live about a decade. Something to think about before you convince yourself you're buying cruelty free products.

I want to raise some chickens one day. But If I did that, I would treat them as pets and not have the heart to eat them. But they are still useful past the egg laying years. Let them roam your garden and they will eat all the bugs in it. They will even eat ticks in your yard. Their poop is good for your garden too.

It is misinformation leading the public to believe commercial food animals suffer. They only suffering they face is some stress. Injuries are not that common and are caused by other animals, not humans. If you raise a cow yourself, it's going to go through the same stress when it's transported to the slaughter house that the other animals experience, if not more since it'll be a very new experience for it. Unless you slaughter it yourself on your property out in it's field, it will still "suffer".

I guess you never saw the tons of hidden videos on youtube of slaughterhouse workers abusing the animals for no reason? Playing kickball with a chicken or chicken baseball? Processing animals before they are even dead? Speed and quantity rule Over making sure the animal Is humanely killed in slaughterhouses.

And now there are regulations in place to stop that crap. If you compare those few instances to the grand scheme of animal slaughter it's absolutely nothing. Slaughter used to be horrible but it's not anymore. It's not perfect but it's no longer cruel. The handful of bastards that do that crap out of the thousands or more people who don't doesn't define an entire industry. PETA and HSUS ONLY show the 5 bad instances out of thousands to get people riled up about stuff. It's like SHARK with rodeo too. They only want people to believe what they want them to believe to meet their agenda. If you've heard of Temple Grandin (or if you haven't), you should look into her work. I've met her and had her lecture to one of my classes (I unfortunately couldn't get into the class she taught full time because of the waiting list) and she singlehandedly changed the food animal industry and the way the animals are treated in plants, including the equipment used to move the animals while still alive.

I know who she is. She is an autistic savant/prodigy who can "get into an animal's head" and understand them better than most.

She also has designed the conveyor systems that are now used in slaughter houses across the country to move individual cows inside the building. She's also been responsible for changing and strengthening regulations in slaughter houses to make them as humane as possible. She is at the forefront of food animal welfare.

Insee chickens on a family farm where they are free to roam. They don't freak out and kill each other. They scratch the ground, search for bugs to eat, sit on their eggs and roost at night. Which is Normal.. If they are in an overcrowded unsanitary condition, they will hurt each other due to lack of space.

That's with a smaller number of chickens though. Even with lots of space if you have a hundred chickens they'll still attack each other.