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: