Broiler Chickens // Animals Australia

Home Free Betty Broiler Chickens

Betty is one of 488 million chickens raised for meat each year in Australia alone.

She will be slaughtered at around just 6 weeks of age. In that time, due to selective breeding, Betty will grow at an unnaturally fast rate—nearly 3 times quicker than nature intended her to.

The impact on Betty’s body is significant. Her heart and immature skeleton is placed under enormous pressure and struggles to cope. Like most of her friends, as she gets bigger she will struggle to walk or even stand up due to lameness or dislocated joints. Betty’s heart may also struggle to cope. If she sits too long on the damp feces that cover much of the floorspace that she and her companions are restricted to, she may develop painful breast blisters.

Many chickens die in the broiler shed
Betty will observe some birds around her die from heart failure. In the short space of 6 weeks, approximately 2 % of all chickens in her shed will die from illness; from being trampled, or starvation or thirst through not being able to reach the food and water.

Approximately 42 days of life is all that Betty will be allowed. During that time she will live in a crammed, unnatural indoor environment devoid of stimulation. She will share her dim shed with at least 10,000 other birds. The industry code of practice deems it acceptable that 20 birds be kept per square metre.

Tens of thousands of birds are crammed into each shed for their short six week lives. Waste continually accumulates during this time, making the air difficult to breathe, and the ground damp with feces.

By 6 weeks of age Betty will have reached her ‘target’ weight (around 2 kg). Her joyless life has an even more harrowing end. Food will be withdrawn from her for 8 to 12 hours. ‘Catchers’, whose task is to catch 300-500 birds per hour and load trucks as quickly as possible, will enter Betty’s shed. She will be roughly grabbed by one of her fragile limbs. Hanging painfully by one leg with up to four other birds she will be forcibly crammed into a tiny crate.

As with all other factory-farmed animals, Betty and her companions’ first glimpse of the outside word will be as she is trucked for slaughter. Her last glimpse of the world will be hanging upside down with her feet shackled in metal stirrups attached to a moving conveyor belt. Her head will be drawn through an electrified water bath to stun her unconscious before an automatic knife cuts her throat. The chicken next to Betty is not so ‘lucky’. He raised his head, missed the water bath, and so faced the cutting machine fully conscious.

Chicken meat is the most popular of all animal flesh consumed by humans—but the cheaper price accurately reflects the barren and physically traumatic lives that these birds are forced to endure.

Broiler chicken If you do not agree with this process then you have a simple choice:

All chicken products that are not labelled 'free range' are factory-farmed. Refuse to endorse and financially support this cruel system. NB. Free-range chickens are raised more humanely but are still slaughtered by the same method as factory-farmed chickens.

Remember what they are not telling you: that the key ingredient in every factory-farmed chicken ‘product’ is suffering.