Go vegan
The explanation behind this is actually pretty disturbing. Due to selective breeding the growth hormones we feed chickens in America, the chickens become fully grown much earlier than usual. It’s like the equivalent of becoming a fully grown adult by the time you are the age of five, but you still have the mental and muscle capacity of a five year old.
Between 1957 and 2005, chickens raised for their meat quadrupled in size due to selective breeding. They grow to their slaughter weight in just 6 weeks, and their legs often struggle to support their own body weight.
If you watch Super Size Me 2, they go into a lot more detail on why the selective breeding is so disturbing.
Amoung other things, the birds are bred for meat muscle development, their cardiovascular systems have not been equally enhanced and as a result, chicken farmers know that the birds are big enough for slaughter because some of them will just start dropping dead of heart failure.
Piggybacking on this comment, but i never realized until I started keeping chickens that meat birds get so disproportionately huge that you can’t allow them to roost / have to have a ramp out of their coop. If they jump, they’ll blow out their legs when they land and just…die. They’re literally bred to be incompatible with life, as no one really needs them to live long anyway.
Hormones in farm feed have been abolished back in the 80s. This is from breeding selective breeds . Stop watching shitty Facebook videos. Your brain has been rotted.
I literally corrected the sentence from “hormones” to “selective breeding” and it’s still factual. Simple mistake. I don’t watch shitty Facebook videos, and my brain isn’t rotten… I just miss remembered what I assume was the scene from super size me 2 mentioned by another poster.
I also included a quote and a citation and my original post about how they grow so large so fast they often collapse under their own weight.
Truly the greatest of errors misremebering that was because of hormones 🙄
Mis remembering hormones? Come on. That is a distinction you don’t ‘mis remember’ seeing as that was the catch phrase of the 2012 sensationalist click bait of the millennium for the PETA. That single phrase laboured under staged farm videos was essentially what dropped their credibility to zero.
You don’t mis remember what reduced an entire movement to fraud.
It’s not hormones, non-medical antibiotic use is absolutely a contributing factor though.
They literally said ‘hormones’ and even admitted to changing it after once they entire internet called them out on it.
non-medical antibiotic
in humans
Important distinction.
Fun fact, wanna take a guess as to why Americans are so fucking huge compared to other countries’ teenagers?
https://twitter.com/US_diarioas/status/1141009330659049473/photo/1
I’ve raised Cornish crosses and fed them normal, quality feed without any hormones: they ended up looking just like the chicken on the right at about 8 weeks old.
They’ve been selectively bred over the decades to grow as fast as possible, as big as possible, docile, and stupid.
Chickens do not receive any hormones. It’s been banned in poultry in the U.S. since the 1950’s when it was tested and shown to be ineffective. Beef commonly gets hormone implants in their ears. No hormones are approved or used in feed.
The rapid growth of the birds is mostly due to selective breeding and nutritional improvements. The growth rate and adult size in animals can be massively changed by breeders. Just look at the Great Dane and mini-yorky in dogs.
They also use antibiotics in the feed to reduce the bacteria load of the birds. This does increase the growth rate and reduces sick birds and deaths. It is not a good idea when it comes to antibiotic resistance buildup in bacteria however.
For any Canadians reading this, adding hormones or steroids to meat and dairy animals has always been prohibited here for all types of livestock.
Antibiotics are allowed on sick cows and pigs but they can’t be used for dairy or meat until they’ve been off the antibiotics for a period of time that is supposed to be long enough to flush it from their system. Chickens are too short lived and antibiotics are prohibited if they are to be sold for human consumption.
You know how A&W advertises that their beef is free of added hormones and steroids? Well that’s actually true for all meat sold in Canada. A&W is just the only one advertising it. Pretty clever as campaign, actually.
Coincidentally, this also blocks most of the importation of chicken and beef from the U.S. giving their domestic producers an almost exclusive market.
A happy little accident I guess.
this chicken is probably less than 2 years old. chickens could live for 10years if they’d be left alone.
I don’t think chickens raised for meat live anywhere near 2 years. Yeah, a quick google shows around a 2 month harvest time for chickens raised for meat. That’s a big part of why chickens are such amazing creatures and make such an affordable protein source, they can be sustainably* harvested year round. (Sustainably as in without decreasing the size of your flock.)
Laying hens are productive for two to three years. They rarely make it into the human food supply though, after that long the texture and flavor of the meat changes and American consumers don’t prefer it. You can probably get them through a local butcher shop, though they might have to order it for you.
In a small and well managed flock, chickens can live 6 to 8 years. In the wild, I don’t think modern chickens would exist at all. Ask anyone who’s kept chickens, keeping the hawks and foxes and raccoons etc. out of them is a constant and eternal struggle.
Ask anyone who’s kept chickens, keeping the hawks and foxes and raccoons etc. out of them is a constant and eternal struggle.
Two things I have learned as a chicken weirdo:
1.) Get dark colored chickens
2.) Get a big mean rooster.
I haven’t lost a chicken so far, but I have seen my bigass stupidly brave rooster take on all comers, he has defeated squirrels, snakes, frogs, mice, and a gopher that was apparently pretty bad at making connections. I’ve watched him chase off a cat and a pretty good sized dog. Foghorn Leghorn is more accurate than I realized.
But more than his incredible dinosaur kung-fu is that he is smart, and communicates with his hens. He will tell them to shelter in the coop, and they will run and hide. A hawk isn’t going to want to deal with 15 pounds of land-bird standing in a small doorway.
For the color, a black or gray chicken will be harder to see against the ground than a white one. Also, I think they look cooler than plain white chickens.
without decreasing the size of your flock.
Read that as “without decreasing the size of your cock”
Laying hens also are productive way beyond their ancestors with 10-20 eggs, which takes a big toll on their bones. According to a study from the university of Kassel an estimated 23-69% per flock come to the slaughtering line with broken keelbones, wings and legs from egg calcium depletion, rough handling and crammed cages.
Egg factory farming is an all around brutal and despicable industry. Look up what forced molting and maceration means and get your own chickens if you’re able or eat scrambled tofu.
No. It is much, much, much worse.
I quote :
Broilers chickens are specially bred for fast growth and slaughtered when they weigh approximately four pounds, usually between seven and nine weeks of age. Birds between 12 and 20 weeks of age, typically weighing between five and ten pounds, are called roasters
Efficiency.
I guess that’s also why people started having turkey for big family gatherings even through chicken tastes better.
Now a chicken is perfectly adequate for a family of four, or even six depending on the trimmings.
I don’t necessarily want them bigger. I want them to have 12 legs and wings so there’s more of the good parts.
It would destroy the poultry industry at least. Nobody would be able to catch a 12 legged chicken. They’re too fast.
