Brittany Waldrep

The folks who design what the industry tells us are “chicken heavens” are real virtuosos when it comes to manipulating the environment of the animals for maximum profit. When layer hen’s production begins to slacken, the producers do not just sit back and let her output wane. Not when they have found it possible to bolster her egg production by a procedure known in the trade as “force-moulting. The already panicked and exhausted hen will suddenly find herself plunged into complete darkness. The artificial lighth1g, which heretofore had been on for upwards of 17 hours a day, is now completely cut off, and at the same time her food and water are removed. After two days of starving without even water in the dark, the bircj, still without food or light, is allowed water. Eventually lighting and food will be returned to what passes for “normal.” Those hens who 51tvive this ingenious procedure will have been shocked into physiology processes associated, under natural conditions, with the seasonal lo of plumage and growth of fresh feathers. After the forced moulting, those hens who survive the ordeal may be sufficiently productive to be kept around for another two months. Then they join those who did not survive the procedure in the first place in our chicken soup.
Hopefully, the hen will have learned something from the days without food or water, because the farm managers certainly have. During her last 30 hours before slaughter she will again receive no food. A headline in Poultry Tribune reminded poultry producers to “Take Feed Away From Spent Hens.” The trade journal brilliantly calculated that food given to hens during the last 30 hours of their lives doesn’t have time to turn into flesh. It stays in the digestive system, and so, counsel the experts, is nothing but a waste of feed.