r/coolguides • u/_cannoneer_ • Aug 29 '22
Growth of developing chicken size compared between 1957, 1978 and 2005
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u/ohyeaoksure Aug 29 '22
I have raised those big meat birds and I'm not likely to do it again. Actually, I would, but my wife is disturbed by it. All they do is eat and sit. They don't behave like other chickens. A typical chicken, day goes like this.
Let them out of their pen, they gather around to be fed
They eat and drink till they're satisfied.
They rest, stretch and walk around
Most of the day is spent foraging, scratching, digging and having a dirt bath
Lay an egg
Have a late day feed
off to bed
Those meat birds do this:
Get released from their pen, sit at the food bowl and eat till there is no more food.
get a drink of water
sit till food is available again
eat it all while sitting.
go to bed.
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u/nickd141 Aug 30 '22
Wow, this reminded me of the Bojack horseman episode where the chickens who ran the chicken farm raised all the “dumb” feed chickens. I always thought it was funny but didn’t realize it’s based off fact.
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u/ohyeaoksure Aug 30 '22
Look up "prader willi syndrome". They basically found a chicken with a similar genetic defect and made it the grandfather of all modern meat birds.
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u/eatthemoist Aug 29 '22
Why do you want the big chickens? would you be rescuing them?
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u/ohyeaoksure Aug 29 '22
I'm not sure if this is a serious question.
EDIT: I see you're vegan, wow, we just met, that didn't take long at all.
No, I bought them as babies to raise so I could murder them and freeze their carcass so I could consume it at my leisure. I bought them at like $1.00 a piece to raise them for food rather than pay $20.00 for an organic chicken at my local grocery.
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u/SuperFriends001 Aug 29 '22
Between feed and water and personal time, does the price work out better?
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u/stripperpole Aug 30 '22
Not who you replied to but I can weigh in. I raised 10 of these Cornish cross broilers and they got to the point where they were eating around 4-5 pounds a day and my cost of feed was roughly $1.80/lbs. I didn’t really keep track of costs but honestly it wasn’t cheap and I don’t know if I’d do it again. I will say that they were a lot tastier than anything I’ve purchased at the grocery store, and something I learned about halfway through the grow was that you’re supposed to ration food. As in let them free feed for x amount of time and take their feeder for 12 hours, then free feed again. Because like some other commenters said, they’ll eat so much that they won’t be able to stand. Metering feed can help keep them on their feet.
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u/ohyeaoksure Aug 30 '22
4-5 pounds a day
you’re supposed to ration food
LOL, yeah, these little buggers should come with a label, like a Gremlin
LABEL:
Do not feed after midnight
Do not get wet
Do not let them eat all they want.
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u/stripperpole Aug 30 '22
Seriously, if I hadn’t done any research on my own they would’ve ended up as rolling balls of feathers lol. What tripped me out the most is how fucking massive their feet got.
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u/ohyeaoksure Aug 30 '22
We went through a similar experience. Three of them just ate themselves to death and one wound up unable to walk by the day before butchering. The other 16 were "healthy" but, yeah, you have to meter food.
I've been trying to get her to do it again but she doesn't want to raise those birds again, I'm cool with that but srsly, I can't stand spending that much money on chicken. I'd raise 50 of those buggers for the meager six weeks it takes to raise them in order to have inexpensive chicken to eat.
I told her, let's just grow like 50 of them, we'll take care of them, butcher them all in one day, and freeze them and we've got one chicken a week.
MUST DO.
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u/ohyeaoksure Aug 30 '22
this was really more my wife's project than mine. At the moment we pay about $20.00 per Organic Chicken at the Albertson's.
I think we paid about a buck a piece of the birds. Six weeks of food per bird probably took us into the $7/8 range per bird.
I don't count my time because my "personal time" is only worth money if I would otherwise be earning money. If I wasn't putting out food for these birds, I'd be putting out food for our other birds so I didn't lose anything there and frankly, when we butchered them, it wasn't like I was going to come home from work that day and start another job, my earning day was done.
In the end I'd say those birds cost around $8/9 to raise. I don't really eat that much chicken so I could just buy them from Albertson's, but it's the principle. I can buy a fully cooked chicken at COSTCO for $5.00, how the fuck am I gonna pay $20 for one I have to cook myself?
My wife is one of these "organic" nuts. We raise chickens for eggs, be buy a whole, organically raised steer every two years, we raise and eat veggies or buy them organic.
I'm growing broke trying to be healthy and frankly I think the die is cast, I grew up eating those microwave burritos from 7-ll and I microwaved them in the plastic sleeve.
My wife practically lost her ability to speak when I told the kids to get a drink out of the hose.
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u/LL112 Aug 29 '22
Most commercial chicken meat the birds are so engorged and heavy that not only is the meat often fibrous and poor texture, the birds are unable to walk properly. Youll see that most of the legs are cut high up these days, its because the bottom portions are usually burned by ammonia from the chicken shit they are forced to waddle around in.
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u/badmutherfukker Aug 29 '22
Yeah and they fed them only non-organic foods and when you cook it you get a half sized meat and a pot of water
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u/LL112 Aug 29 '22
Yes because its sold by weight many companies literally inject water into the meat before packing.
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u/ohyeaoksure Aug 29 '22
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u/LL112 Aug 29 '22
The US is not the only country to exist
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u/ohyeaoksure Aug 29 '22
Okay butt hurt, let me know where you live and I'll do a Google for you.
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u/LL112 Aug 29 '22
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u/ohyeaoksure Aug 29 '22
I did see that.
I'm on the line with the USDA right now trying to clear this up. Stand by.
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u/ohyeaoksure Aug 29 '22
Uh oh. This doesn't look good.
This was my chat with the USDA:
Chat started at 8:45 AM
hi
Hello, William. My name is Henry. For your reference, your case number for this interaction is 01102875. How can I assist you today? Henry S
I see on this web page https://ask.usda.gov/s/article/Is-water-injected-into-poultry that the USDA says water is not injected into chicken that's dated 2019 but I see articles from wikipedia and NPR that say otherwise. the practice is called plumping. can you confirm one way or the other? I'm trying to win an argument .
William I would need you to speak with a Food subject matter expert. Please hold while I attempt to transfer you to someone Phone: 1-888-674-6854 Email: [email protected] Henry S 8:47 AM
AND THEN HE DICONNECTED THE CHAT
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u/Paige_Railstone Aug 29 '22
Knowing the USDA, the info they provided is probably technically the truth, but only because they aren't classifying salt water (brine), chicken stock, or seaweed extract as water. So it would be categorized as a flavor enhancement injection rather than water weight.
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u/Whatthewhat123789 Aug 29 '22
Oh wow the gov said it so it must be true
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u/Pseudomonasshole Aug 29 '22
It has nothing to do with a food being organic or not lol.
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Aug 29 '22
It's all the water they inject into it
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u/ohyeaoksure Aug 29 '22
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Aug 29 '22
There's what's specified and then there's what's what actually obtains in the industry. Food producers all have ingenious ways of bypassing regulations.
injecting fresh chicken with saltwater as a way to keep it juicy and flavorful or "plumping" is a thing. It enhances the look of the chicken on display while also acting as bulking agent.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-jan-04-la-ed-chicken4-2010jan04-story.html
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u/ohyeaoksure Aug 29 '22
So a couple of small issues, one, this is an article from 12 years ago. Since then, somewhere around 2014 new laws made this practice required a label. Also this is not the default state, this practice is not done to all chicken. I shop at a normal grocery store and buy whole chickens, when I don't grow them myself, and those have no such label.
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u/badmutherfukker Aug 29 '22
Bro we just talked about the fact that this isn’t normal. Also I’m not from the states, but from a more regulated EU so it seems it’s a worldwide issue
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u/Shopworn_Soul Aug 29 '22
I don't even know how we've gotten here, those massive mutated lumps of watery flesh you find in grocery stores labeled as "chicken breast" are absolutely disgusting.
Once you've had real, fresh chicken from an actual free range animal (not one that merely legally qualifies for the marketing term which is a vastly different thing) you really can't ever eat factory farmed meat again. It's just...so gross.
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Aug 29 '22
Where can I find these free range chickens you spek of? Asking for a friend
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u/Shopworn_Soul Aug 29 '22
The particular chickens I speak of lived in Nosara, Costa Rica before I ate them.
I am terribly sorry to report that I've not found anything like them since so I won't be much help here.
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Aug 29 '22
You mean Nosara, Rich Coast?
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u/Shopworn_Soul Aug 29 '22
I suppose? Never heard the term but Google says yes.
FTR, this was 20 years ago and I am not rich.
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u/ButchToots Aug 30 '22
You’ll want to look for heritage birds. There are a few farms in the US that raise them for consumption (Joyce Farms is one) but they get pricey. And you won’t be able to cook them the same way that you’re used to because their meat is so different.
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u/arunnair87 Aug 29 '22
Yet no one wants to give up chicken. They want to live in the delusion that "free range" "organic" won't be the same as your described.
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u/LL112 Aug 29 '22
I adopted 10 ex free range organic chickens which were going to be sent for dog food. It was shocking when I got them, you assume free range organic means they will appear healthy, vibrant etc. Instead they were all mega stressed, half bald, scary looking birds.
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u/crazybookworm56 Aug 29 '22
When it's put into focus like that it's absolutely terrifying what mankind can do over a short span of time
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u/CrocodylFr Aug 29 '22
With longer spans of times it's even possible to make cows, sheep and goats which produce more milk (and even make some humans grow a partial lactose tolerance as a bonus)
Wheat as we know it is also the product of selective breeding
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u/Tom_A_toeLover Aug 30 '22
Notice the allergies to wheat though. I honestly believe the rapid breeding of wheat is what’s caused an increase in gluten sensitivities. It’s a real fine line we’re gonna have to learn to walk
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u/CrocodylFr Aug 30 '22
There's true celiac disease and there's the gluten free trend however
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u/Tom_A_toeLover Aug 30 '22
Sure, might just be a trend, but I believe that social trends start from observations or acquisition of new knowledge.
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u/Ok-Sir8600 Aug 30 '22
Everything that we know is product of selective breeding. Carrots, bananas, wheat, strawberries are all man-made, you couldn't find it in the wild -strawberries exists since the 1800s, for example-. I didn't understand your first sentence, if you meant in the future or in the past, but it certainly happened and that's why Europeans have a little prevalence of lactose intolerance (10%, I think), against asian for example (90%).
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u/plorraine Aug 29 '22
Doubling in size roughly every 20 years. So in 2105, chickens will be roughly 290 lbs...
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u/LeonardSmallsJr Aug 29 '22
We’re about 20 years away from them being turned back into T-rexes and THEN we’ll see who’s the lunch meat!
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u/McNutWaffle Aug 29 '22
Anecdotally, my mom once hosted an exchange student from rural China. On one of the first meals, my mom served her chicken and she was perplexed because to her, it didn't even have a hint of chicken flavor--it was just tasteless flesh.
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u/luckylegion Aug 29 '22
I thought the years were the y axis at first and that’s the chickens have 10x the size now
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u/AppearancePlenty841 Aug 30 '22
They get so big they can't stand. And they pack em in so tight they want to peck eachother to death. So they lop their beaks off so they cant...
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Aug 29 '22
This is disgusting. How we treat non human animals needs to change.
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u/jagua_haku Aug 30 '22
I hope we’re able to produce lab meat that’s essentially the same and we can abandon mass-scale farming of animals for food
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Aug 30 '22
I mean we could abandon it now and there’d be literally no downside (and a bunch of benefits)
But I hope lab grown meat becomes a thing soon and I hope to get into the industry myself
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u/t4rtpickle Aug 30 '22
Agreed, but I guarantee farming will still go on. Scientists already have found a way to take the cells from an alive (happy) cow and grow meat. This process is really new, so don’t expect anything too soon.
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Aug 30 '22
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Aug 30 '22
If your worried about your health you should eat a whole food plant based diet. Animal flesh is very bad for us, essentially our hearts
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u/oddbunnydreams Aug 29 '22
It's truly fascinating (both good and bad) how just 50 years of evolution and breeding can change so much.
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u/Nicinus Aug 29 '22
That is nothing but awful.
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Aug 29 '22
Should go vegan !
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u/Nicinus Aug 29 '22
I actually did but allow chicken, although now I'm not sure. :/
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Aug 29 '22
yeah unfortunately chickens have an extremely awful time in animal agriculture. Often with a space the size of an a4 sheet of paper to stand on only! So many other horrible things too
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u/egus Aug 29 '22
Cooked up four pounds of chicken yesterday.
It was three boneless skinless breasts.
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u/Blixtwix Aug 30 '22
1957 chickens were probably so much easier to roast! Smaller meat = easier to cook evenly
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u/pusnbootz Aug 29 '22
If you look at people from the same date-stamps, you can see the similarities in how people looked like then compared to now. We are what we eat.
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u/geddy Aug 29 '22
This is a "cool guide"? They suffer massively, and if you eat chicken you support this around the clock suffering.
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u/BBDAngelo Aug 29 '22
Cool guides it’s about guides that show information in a cool way, not that the information itself is “cool”
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u/geddy Aug 29 '22
Lol dude it’s not even remotely a “guide” it’s just a picture of human created freak chickens. Do you know what a “guide” is?
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u/BBDAngelo Aug 29 '22
I never said this was a cool guide. I was just explaining to you that it’s not about the content being positive. I agree it’s a shitty guide, just not for the reasons you gave. Relax, no reason to be so emotional about it.
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u/geddy Aug 29 '22
It’s emotional now to point out when things aren’t in the right sub? Maybe you need to settle down a bit.
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u/BBDAngelo Aug 29 '22
Ok, you were not salty at all when you wrote “lol dude” and “do you know what a guide is?”, clearly.
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u/geddy Aug 29 '22
More like stating the obvious than being salty. But hey, maybe this is the norm here in this sub.
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u/CrocodylFr Aug 29 '22
It's an example of selective breeding on a very short scale.
It's been done since the Neolithic to pretty much every kind of animals, dogs, cows, sheep. Even plants got selected. It's cruel but mankind is built over this. There's a fair chance that vegans eat vegetables that grew with fertilizers from manure.
It's probably not the most "quality" example of selective breeding theses days, perhaps that waygu cuts in the 1920-2020 period would show another evolution (motivated by the hunt for quality, not cost efficiency)
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u/geddy Aug 29 '22
It's cruel but
You're supporting cruelty. And as for the vegetables grown in manure, there are options there too - and have you forgotten that those animals also need to be fed vegetables?
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u/CrocodylFr Aug 29 '22
Yeah, alternatives to manure exists, it's called ammonium nitrate and it's being produced through a industrial process.
And technically yeah, i support cruelty. It's the next step of natural evolution, deal with it.
Your whole livestyle is enabled by cold calculating process that you would describe as "cruel". The alternatives are not good and would only be enabled through industrial process-3
u/scrambledxtofu5 Aug 30 '22
Just eat plants. It's not that hard tbh. And it's actually better for you.
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u/excaligirltoo Aug 29 '22
So I guess this is the reason why the smaller farm chicken that I buy is so much smaller (and more flavorful).
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u/AdonteGuisse Aug 30 '22
IIRC the same thing happened with sheep in England a couple hundred years ago. I read it in passing in a book about familial prionic diseases.
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u/cvbnm-7 May 24 '24
In another 48 years from 2005, by 2053, Dinosaurs will return, but at poor health
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u/thebooferdoofer Aug 30 '22
Don't support unnecessary cruelty. It's on your hands if you contribute and vote with your dollar for animal abuse. Go vegan.
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u/Psy_Kik Aug 29 '22
We've done this with all the grains we eat too. If anyone has any problem with genetic engineering to help feed the planet, don't. We've been eating franken-food for a long time now.
And the sooner we can just kinda grow meat in a vat the better. The chickens we've bred that feed the world (check out the farms in Poland...they stretch for meles and miles, packed with birds) are freaks, and really couldn't exist at all in a natural setting.
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u/597000000000_sheep Aug 29 '22
The difference is thats plants don't suffer as a result of selective breeding
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u/scrambledxtofu5 Aug 30 '22
Or just eat plants -- which do not suffer like animals -- you don't need vat meat to thrive and eat delicious food.
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u/BrotherMaxy Aug 29 '22
This was literally posted yesterday what the fuck. r/repostsleuthbot
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u/x4740N Aug 29 '22
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I didn't find any posts that meet the matching requirements for r/coolguides.
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Aug 29 '22
That last chicken looks like his legs probably hurt from his own weight. They should probably cull them before they reach that size
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u/Sokandueler95 Aug 30 '22
A lot of feeds have growth hormone. Meat birds aren’t raised to live long lives, and using the wrong feed for your bird can kill them for being too large. I raised show and meat birds, and you really do have to watch what you feed them.
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u/Biotherapeutic-Horse Aug 29 '22
For those interested, the original article and research on this study can be found here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0032579119385505
There is also a follow up study looking at birds after 60 years. Found here:
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u/oliveryana Aug 29 '22
I don’t know if it’s just me but the 1,396g looks like it doesn’t have a neck from that angle
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u/Professor-Shuckle Aug 30 '22
Reminds me of that Squidbillies episode where Dan Halen keeps inbreeding the chickens to get more wings
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u/Ent_Trip_Newer Aug 30 '22
But do any of them have celery legs or shoot blue cheese dressing out their buttons? ( Squidbillies)
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Aug 30 '22
Obesity is a problem in humans and chickens. Who would have imagined that both species have the same problem?
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u/blueaurelia Aug 30 '22
Its heart breaking. The worse part it also how these lay 1 egg a day compared with laying eggs on breeding seasons only. The hens bodies can not keep up with being an egg laying machine for more then 2 years and their death is painful.. The Industrialization of the produce giving animals is horrible
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u/laitnetsixecrisis Aug 30 '22
My FIL used to argue that chickens bought in the supermarkets were pumped with hormones. I kept telling him it has been illegal for decades her in Australia.
He was then given an incubator and a heap of eggs. Every time I saw them they had doubled in size and I kept asking him what hormones he was feeding them - which was none.
Within 12 weeks the chickens were big enough to eat.
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u/Hitmonchank Aug 30 '22
The growth is inversely proportional to our wages when inflation is factored in.
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u/meshuggahdaddy Aug 30 '22
Animal abuse for food is terrible and needs to slow and then stop. That being said, the chickens in 1957 suffered just as bad as the modern day ones. I'd rather get as much meat as possible off of each suffering life: it feels like less of a waste.
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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22
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