The Tenth and final day 2.20.09

Today is the last day of my poultry rotation. I go through phases of being callus and doing well, and then crashing like last night/today. I didn't realize how emotionally spent I was--i am done. good thing it's the last day.

But what a day it was.

In the morning, we went to a chicken slaughter/processing facility. Bringing cameras into slaughter plants is a huge no-no (they are afraid animal rights people will freak out when they see the videos--which doesn't much make sense to me. if the slaughterhouses were to make their own video and publish it, then they could make sure everything is pristine, they could boast their welfare programs (this plant had a welfare program where an independent group came and audit-ed them on welfare standards), etc etc. it would put a good spin on it, people would get over their initial shock of seeing animals die and they would feel more comfortable with it. i think an open policy would be better for the industry...whatever..

so how is a chicken slaughtered....

the broiler chickens are trucked to teh slaugher plant on a truck like this (i know these are ducks, but it's the same setup)


A pallet of cages is unloaded with a machine (each pallet is like 10 layers high)...the pallet of cages is tipped and dumps the birds on to a conveyor belt.

The conveyor belt brings the chickens into the slaughter plant.

Works grab the chickens and put them into "shackles" like this...

this was the part i had a problem with--the workers were really rough when shackling the birds (who were conscious)...

Then the chickens are dipped (6-10inches) into a water bath that is electrified--> this "stuns" them (supposedly--i couldn't see as they went into the bath--only after they had come out in a few seconds--they appeared stunned, but their nerves made them shudder--it was weird)

Then the chickens go through a machine that chops off their heads. They have a guy after that machine with a knife to cut heads off any chickens that miss that machine (~1/20 need something cut off)

Then the chickens go in a scalder which loosens the feathers, then the feather picker (machine with ton of rubber fingers), then the carcasses get inspected by the usda and parts get cut off, or condemned or whatever. then the carcass gets processed.

The processing part is super extensive and requires a ton of machines and workers. i was amazed by how complicated it is. This plant was also very clean. which was good i guess.

It was an interesting experience over all and i wish i had pictures and videos to show you:( it's hard for people to learn how their food gets to the plate when those who supply it won't let you see. *sigh*

The Ninth Day 2.19.09

Today, after a slow morning, we went to a cage-free layer house run by the Amish (despite the fact that the house utilized electricity...)

If i remember right, this house had ~150,000 birds in the house, partitioned off into 4 pens.


While walking through, i was trying to compare the animal welfare to the cages houses I saw. This house was nice in that the floor were slatted so all the poo fell into a "pit" and thus the smell was better than a lot of the other houses i've been in, and very clean. There was more feather loss in this flock (they were pecking each other--which often happens with this strain of birds when they get older). These were a lot calmer birds, b/c of their genetics. They seemed "happier" to be, but they were calmer birds in general, so idk.

The Eighth Day 2.18.09

Today all i did was listen to some lectures...that were kind of boring....oh well:)

The Seventh Day 2.17.09

Today we went to another layer farm. This one was slightly different in that under each set of cages there was a manure belt. The belt got from one end of the house to the other end in 3-4 days in one house. The other house was sort of the same but the belt was moved more often b/c the manure didn't dry out as well. In both houses, the smell was better than in the house with the "pit".

Here are some pictures of the manure belts...


The first house had 6 layers of cages; the downside was that you had to use a ladder or lift to even see the top 2-3 rows.



The second house had walk ways for the top 3 layers....you and kind of see it below...


There were 7 birds per cage...and they were pretty darn flighty...



oh and one correction--industry standards say pullets need 44 sq inches per bird, but adult layers need 67 sq inches per bird...so that's like slightly bigger than 8" x 8".

Here are some other random pictures...


(the poo pile)

The Sixth Day 2.16.09

Today was boring. The doctor was gone so i sat at the lab all day and got work done. That's all.

The Fifth Day 2.13.09 (friday the 13th!)

This morning we went to a Mennonite farm that raises ~4000 silkie chickens for the live bird market. There were a few rooms where i had to wear my mask because the ammonia smell was overpowering, but compared to the other farms i visited, this was the "best" one. It was also nice because the woman who took care of the birds seemed to really care about them, and expressed how she struggled with the fact that these animals were a business--something that had no been expressed at any farm. It was a better day than the previous farm visits.


There are about ~1000 birds in each room. The large building is split up into 4 rooms: the chicks occupy the middle two rooms, and eventually the flock is moved to the outer two rooms at a certain age. Feeders are hand filled throughout the room, and nipple drinkers hang from teh ceiling in rows. The litter is not changed or added to--this is typical.



The flock FLIPPED OUT when i used my flash, dashing to the other end of the barn.

The Fourth Day 2.12.09

Today we went to a hatchery. This hatchery is HUGE and hatches chicks out for layer farms.

The eggs come from the breeder farm on a truck, already loaded onto these racks

Then they sit in the "cooler" (65 degrees) for 1-7 days until they are scheduled to go in the incubator which looks like this


once in the incubators, they have 12 hours of "pre-heat" where the temperature is gradually raised from the 65 deg to 103 or 105 or something high like that. Then that temp is gradually dropped as the embryos get bigger, until it's about 98 deg around day 17.

The at day 17 the eggs are moved from the incubators to the "hatchers". The chicks are transferred from the turner racks to flat trays, awaiting hatching (at day 21). Here is a video of the chicks the day after they hatched, still in teh "hatcher" waiting to go to the processing room.




After the chicks have been hatched for one day and are dry, they are brought to the separator room where a machine dumps them on to these slats that let the chicks fall through but catch most of the eggs and crap.






After being separated, the chicks travel on a conveyor belt to the next door room. They go around in a circle while the workers determine if they are male or female by the length of their wing feathers. They throw them into a female or male chute. The females (inner, lower conveyor after sexing) go onto the vaccinators (next movie). The males are in the outer, lower chute and fall via a trapped door into a macerator. A macerator is like a high powered blender. literally. the male chicks of the layer strain get macerated in this blender. it sounds horrible, and isn't the best, but the reports i've read say the chicks die in 0.3 seconds....i don't know, there isn't another alternative for the industry though.




then the chicks continued on the conveyor belt to the vaccinators...they are giving a vaccine under the skin via an automated machine:





After that, the chicks are loaded into stackable trays (100 each) and put in the holding room (heated) until the truck comes to ship them to farms.



So that's the hatchery. I guess i should be proud of myself for only shooting my mouth once.

The Third Day 2.11.09

This morning we got up early to go with the third year vet students to a pullet farm (pullets are young female chickens before they’ve started to lay eggs). At this house, the pullets are raised until they are of egg-laying age (around 20 weeks) then shipped to a layer house.

The chicks arrive around a day of age in boxes with 100 in each box. Workers then transfer the chicks to the top row of cages. As the chicks grow, some are transferred to the lower cages until all 5 rows are crammed full of birds.

At 10 days of age, the chicks get their beaks clipped (aka chopped off) and are vaccinated.

Here are some more pictures:

EVERY poultry farm we go on we have to suit up in this gear for biosecurity reasons (we don't want to be bringing diseases into the farms, especially since we travel to so many). Don't we all look ridiculous? hahahaha

Here is me standing inbetween two isles of cages.

The house was so long i couldnt' see the other side from one end....

I had trouble counting the birds in the cage b/c they were so scared and kept freaking out when the saw people...i think there are about 14 birds per cage. Again, crowded, but up to industry standards.

They are still cute:)

This was sad. Some of the chicks were "mis-sexed" at the hatchery--this is a group of males....the farm was holding these guys for the third years to practice blood draws....but since the third years did that in another lab, they had no purpose and were going to be killed. Well, they were killed. Males have no use in the layer industry, as you'll see in the next post...

This is the pit in this house....this is the house were they clean it often, so the smell was better (still not fresh air, but as good as it gets). The sad part was that chickens escape from their cages all the time and fall into the pit--as you can see in this pic. These chickens had incredible feather condition because they weren't tore up by the cage wires....they will be killed when the pit is cleaned, as they don't want to bring any disease from the pit up to the cages.

This is the view from the pit up at the bottom of the cages.

this is a common site--a dead chicken trampled in the cage....dead birds are cleared from the cages 1-2 times per day.

And then I spent the afternoon doing nothing in the poultry lab.I I can’t get my laptop online in this building so I can’t do any of my work and I have errands to run….

Oh!!! Before I go, I need to share the worst part of PA: the state is trying to keep me away from good beer! AHHHHHHHHH!!! OH NO!!!!! THE HORROR!!!

I’m used to Madison where there is a liquor store 5 blocks from ANY location and Wisconsin in general, it’s very easy to find a store with a selection.

So in PA, there is no alcohol sold in stores (obstacle #1) and the liquor/wine stores are state run (weird) so there is NO beer in those stores (obstacle #2). The nearest store that sells any kind of beer is a 10 minute drive—and it only sells wholesale beer in nothing less than 24 bottles—now I like my beer, and can make friends with the UPenn students by supplying beer to the dorm, but I want to try different kinds of local beer and I can’t do that a 24 pack at a time (obstacle #3).

So after much researching, I found what appears from the website to be a decent beer store 17 miles away. It had better be worth the drive, or I swear Pennsylvania, I shall never return! Hahahaha!

Here is some mediocre beer:

The Second Day 2.10.09

Today was more like what I thought this rotation was going to be.

We spent the morning with a lab technician who showed us how to inoculate 9 day old chick fetuses with bird blood, to see if the avian influenza virus grows. There are a lot of live bird markets out here where live chickens, turkeys, ducks, quail, etc are traded on the street. Law requires that one out of so many of these birds have samples taken that are then run through of two tests (one being inoculating chick fetuses) to see if that bird has avian influenza. It’s a pretty interesting series of tests.

In the afternoon we went to a commercial layer farm (chickens that lay eggs). I’m told this was a “good” farm as far as air quality and “welfare” is concerned, which really doesn’t say much about the industry, I think…Here are some pictures to help walk through the experience….

These are the "houses" of laying hens. All 7 houses together hold almost 1 million birds. INSANE!

here are some workers packaging eggs

this worker is applying slight pressure to all the eggs so she will exacerbate any cracks...then the eggs go into a machine that shines a bright light on to find the cracks, then those eggs are pitched...also, a sound wave is sent through the eggs that also looks for cracks (somehow...)

Here is inside a layer house. The cages are stacked 5 rows high, slightly offset so the chicken manure doesn't fall only in the cage below, but some falls down the open middle in the "pit" below.

There are 7 chickens in each cage. They are crammed in so tightly that all the birds cannot stand or sit at the same time--they need to alternate. Apparently, the "welfare" standard is that each laying hen needs 44 sq inches of floor space--which boggles my mind because that's only an area 5"x8" which is smaller than the bird's body!!

It's kind of hard to see but on either side of the cages (on one end of the rows) are these conveyor belts with rubber fingers on them that gently brought the eggs from each level down to the conveyor belt that brought the eggs out of the house to the packaging room.

This is the "pit". All of the chicken poo falls into the "basement" of the chicken house. This house cleaned out the "pit" once a year. that's right. once a year--which is typical for most layer houses. in this house you can see the manure piling almost as high as the ceiling. notice the dust that my camera lens caught...gross. (the next day we visited a house that cleaned their pit 1-4 times a month and the smell was sooooooo much better there).

This is an "air conditioner" that cools water....the water is them misted over the birds during the summer to keep them cool. This farm only had it in 2/7 houses....most farms don't this. Each summer mortality increases due to heat exhaustion; this cooler keeps the houses ~5deg F cooler than the non cooled houses which means incredibly less mortality.

So that was my trip to the layer house. The ammonia smell was so intense in the house, that I was hacking up phlegm the whole next day...can't imagine what it's like for the hens to never breathe fresh air:(

The First Day 2.9.09

Today is the first day of my poultry rotation and it was kind of weird. We started out the morning by doing nothing. At least it gave me time to check my email and look up the locations of some grocery stores. Then we left right before lunch to drive a few hours to a meeting where a sales guy was pitching some ventilation system to broiler producers. Then, after the vet schmoozed for 20 min after the meeting, we headed to the “field lab” to do a “case”.

A “case” means that a producer is having a problem (usually increased death rate) and they dropped off dead chickens and some live chickens. Usually, we draw blood from the live chickens (to check various things like blood glucose, send in for more testing, etc), then euthanize them (via cervical dislocation…essentially you grab the head in one hand, the feet in the other, pull and twist to separate the neck vertebrae, thus severing the spinal cord…I’m definitely not in favor of cervical dislocation in other species, however, I’ve used euthanasia solution (the stuff they use to euthanize cats and dogs) in production poultry and it doesn’t work…so I’m not sure how else to euthanize them so I’ve come to the fact that I’ll have to learn how to cervically dislocate chickens…and I learned today) :(

Then we perform necropsies (like an autopsy, but on a non-human animal) on all the animals. These necropsies are quick and dirty. We’re looking for big lesions to give us a diagnosis.

Today, we did a “case “ of 3 day old chicks that died from “starve-out”. From talking to the vet and reading, starve-out is when chicks die at 3-4 days of age, when the yolk sac reserves are depleted, from starvation. This can be due to the inability of the chicks to find food or chicks who hatched too early. I’m not sure why chicks hatching too early causes them to die, but oh well.

The second “case” was ~6 day old chicks who were suddenly dying. Some of the chicks had normal blood sugar levels and some had low, so we tentatively diagnosed them as “hypo-glycemic syndrome”, which I can’t find in my books….i think it’s essentially that chicks that young have a high metabolic rate and any stressor can cause them to go off-feed for a bit—which can cause them to suddenly become hypoglycemic, causing death. The vet recommendation to the producer was to add vitamins to the water, and ensure at least 8 hours of darkness every day.

The third “case “ of the day was 13 day old chicks who did not have coccidiosis…haha…I can’t remember what was wrong with them…I don’t think we really found anything.

that's all for today....

Greetings from PA 2.8.09

Believe it or not, this is the first time I have traveled by myself! I flew from GB with a layover in Detroit to Philadelphia, rented a car, and drove to the middle of nowhere without a hitch—yay for me haha

“unfortunately” (hee hee) the only economy car the rental place had was a sebring convertible….i guess I’ll tough it out;)

Why am I in PA? I’m doing a commercial poultry rotation at the university of pennsylvania’s school of veterinary medicine (b/c they have a good program, I hear). Last year I applied for and received a stipend from the American association of avian pathologist, so luckily, I don’t have to pay for this trip. Oh, and I also got this rotation to count for a required rotation so it’s like I’m killing two birds with one stone…unfortunately, I’ll be killing many birds on this trip (which you’ll read about later) .

At UPenn, the large animal hospital is ~45 min outside of Philadelphia (away from the main campus) in the middle of nowhere. The students stay in the dorms built for them, as am I. I’m rooming with a UPenn student, who is very nice.

I’m going to try to keep a detailed log of this trip for my own sanity (I have a feeling it’s going to be emotionally taxing) and for some friends who are interested in the details.