Hens Rescued from Abandoned Egg Ranch, Need Homes

Fox40 News ^

[GOPinCa]

VACAVILLE— Animal rescuers in Vacaville are getting closer to adopting out thousands of chickens that were rescued last month from an abandoned egg ranch.

The hens were left for dead by Andy Keung Cheung, the owner of A&L Poultry, according to Stanislaus County Animal Services. Officials say most of the 50,000 hens were either dead or had to be euthanized because they were in such bad shape.

Animal Place in Vacaville is one of three rescue groups currently rehabilitating the hens that were deemed healthy enough for potential adoption.

Animal Place, Farm Sanctuary in Orland and Harvest Home in the Bay Area are all looking for donations and volunteers.

[PrincessB]

Yep. I read about this in Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat. If you want to see something really interesting, watch an old Julia Child show from the 60’s or 70’s that features chicken. On the one I saw, The breast meat barely covered her hand and is fairly thin, probably 3 oz worth of meat raw. I am pretty sure that the breast I ate over the course of last week had close to eight ounces of meat on it cooked.

[CynicalBear]

I suggest you visit a real poultry farm or egg facility and then a processing plant. I grew up on a farm by the way and had many friends who worked at the processing plant. I also owned a trucking company that hauled the “chicken slurry” and “chicken parts” that was made of old laying hens. The “chicken slurry” is made into nuggets for fast food restaurants and the chicken meat goes into chicken soup at Campbell’s etc.

[DPMD]

NOW and “The View” can always use a few more hens.

[mbarker12474]

Another botched chicken abortion:

from Wikipedia (excerpt):

Mike the Headless Chicken

(April 1945 – March 1947), also known as Miracle Mike,[1] was a Wyandotte chicken that lived for 18 months after his head had been mostly cut off. Thought by many to be a hoax, the bird's owner took him to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City to establish the facts of the story.[1]

Beheading

On September 10, 1945, farmer Lloyd Olsen of Fruita, Colorado, United States, had his mother-in-law around for supper and was sent out to the yard by his wife to bring back a chicken. Olsen chose a five-and-a-half-month-old cockerel named Mike. The axe missed the jugular vein, leaving one ear and most of the brain stem intact.[2][3]

Despite Olsen's botched handiwork, Mike was still able to balance on a perch and walk clumsily; he even attempted to preen and crow, although he could do neither. After the bird did not die, a surprised Mr. Olsen decided to continue to care permanently for Mike, feeding him a mixture of milk and water via an eyedropper; he was also fed small grains of corn.

When used to his new and unusual center of mass, Mike could easily get himself to the highest perches without falling. His crowing, though, was less impressive and consisted of a gurgling sound made in his throat, leaving him unable to crow at dawn. Mike also spent his time preening and attempting to peck for food with his neck.[2]

[Hodar]

How many years ago are you talking?

I'm talking about TODAY, not 10 or 20 years ago. Fast food accounts for a majority of the chicken that is processed today, and the demands required to meet the needs of McDonalds, KFC, Burger King and others dictate the way the industry is set up. Wasn't always this way, but that's the way it is today.

Chickens farmed for meat are called broiler chickens. Chickens will naturally live for 6 or more years, but broiler chickens typically take less than 6 weeks to reach slaughter size.[24] A free range or organic meat chicken will usually be slaughtered at about 14 weeks of age.

Source

6 weeks x 7 days = 42 days; I indicated 52 days, so I was off a bit. The reason they stick to this age, is to keep the SIZE constant; automation in the facitlity does not deal well with over-sized birds; in fact farmers get docked for bringing larger chickens in for processing - due to the havok it makes with the automated processes.

Again, we are talking about $0.58/lb of chicken. This is the market price set by the market - and again, because you obviously didn't read it last time; when your LABOR costs are around $16/hr you need every person processing >27 lbs per hour in order to just meet that price from the labor point of view. So, in the case of the laying hens - again - assuming we are talking about FREE birds, each dressing out to 5lbs each; each employee has to average >5 birds/hour to include slaughter, bleeding, plucking, gutting, and freezing to just keep your labor costs at that price.

Your past experience, while fine - and I believe you completely - is ... in ... the ... past.

I just got back from Arkansas Sunday night, I have family there - raising chickens hasn't changed in the past week. Layers are still being killed and buried - it's too expensive in labor costs to do anything else.

Again, the price per pound for chicken is $0.58. There is no way to process non-standard sized birds, and use automation to get the layers done in quantity - thus, these 'inferior' meat of the layers cannot be processed economically - and this is all based on economy.

The economy of scale is for the 7 week old chickens; that is what Tyson's production facility is automated to handle. Personally, I'd love to have these old birds used for soups, or even pet food. I'm opposed to wanton waste. But the fact is that the labor costs do handle these larger birds make it economically non-viable to do on a large scale. This is where you need labor to handle these birds - and people are simply not willing to pay more per pound, for a larger bird. I mean, given $15 to spend on Chicken for your family, would you buy 3 larger birds at $5 each, or would you buy 10.8 lbs of boneless chicken breasts (at $1.39) at Costco? Typically - most people buy the boneless chicken breast at Costco.

[CynicalBear]

You just live in your fantasy world of burying chickens. I’ll remain in the real world where they go into pet food, soups, and nuggets.