Farming is crucial as much to American society as it is to the whole world. Most of the animals in these farms do not come from where most people would expect. Some farm animals are grown in other barns and then transported to what we know as slaughterhouses. Whenever an animal, farm animal to be exact, is born their life becomes a process. This is because they are only raised so that they can be either be used to reproduce or just be killed and sold in the market for money. At birth most of the baby animals are immediately taken away from their mother so that they can be sold and are more than likely shipped to another farm. Even after these animals are transported the fact that they are horribly treated does not change a bit, these animals are put in crates that only let them fit exactly having very limited space to move where they can not even make a full turn. These cages separate animals and are only accessible through steel frames which only allow these animals to feed their young ones. Other farm animals are also mistreated not only pigs but also chicken. Chicken are probably the most abused farm animal recorded in America yearly. Chickens are also placed in very small cages where, just as sows in crates, are barely able to move and can't even turn completely around because there is not space. Cramming these chickens into cages about the size of a printing sheet around 8.5x11'. Depending on the productivity these chickens are placed with more or less chickens in one case, but ideally these chickens are placed 2 in every cage. Placing these chickens into these cages is already a hazard alone but it gets even worst when they have farms and small barns used to only grow these chicken. The owners of these farm animals tend not to care much about these animals and it's visible with all of the inhumane treatment going on. Diseases are able to be easily spread throughout farms because they are so tight packed together and live one on top of another.
Living amongst manure is a part of every day life for these farm animals, these chicken houses, cow barns and sow crates go uncleaned for huge periods of time. Some animal farms have gone so long without being cleaned that health inspectors have fined them thousands of dollars in order for these business giants to try and do something about this issue. One health inspector went to a Tyson company that apparently had not cleaned their company in about 1 year. Placing an animal in its own feces is not only degrading but also is very hazardous to its health. The sole purpose of manure is basically for the body to secrete any waste that the body doesn't need meaning that they need to be nowhere around it. After a while most of the chickens in these barns grow callouses and blisters on their feet from sitting in their feces all day long. Another very big problem amongst these farms is how they are maintained. An "inspection" is done whenever the slaughtering companies go in and take the animals at night in order to kill them which most of the time happens at night since they are less mobile and most of the time are asleep. Removing them at night also reveals another factor about these animals, which is how many of them dead there are. Since there are so many of them tight packed most of the time it is really hard to tell which are dead or alive, which also shows that sometimes they don't just walk around their waste but also live around other dead corpses which can lead to many diseases being spread throughout all of the animals in the barn.
Annually millions of chickens, cows and pigs are raised and killed in order to be consumed by the American people but some questions that people don't ever try and ask themselves is where do these animals really come from and what is their life like. At birth these animals these animals are immediately taken away from their parents and are sorted into different categories, some of these categories include egg layers, and feeders which are the ones grown and raised so that they can be killed and sold. For every animal the treatment is different, but unfortunately all lead to unfortunate death. All of these animals first are put together in order for them to breed but some are resistant to this method and the outcome isn't what the farmers want it to be so they proceed to artificial insemination which is when they take the sperm out of the male animals and go on to catch the female animals to inject the sperm so that they all result pregnant one way or another. From there on the process is a little different for every animal. Cows have their babies and are placed in different cages from each other, this causes the cow to go through heavy depression. These cows, just like humans have feelings and are very well aware when they have their offspring removed. Pigs on the other hand are also separated, but are also castrated by the owners because a study they had showed that the meat with non-castrated pigs had a funny taste to it. Unlike cows pigs are separated but aren't placed as far from each other, they are placed in cages that they cant't perform a full turn because it is so small but can lay down in order to feed their young ones. In the middle of the two conjoined cages there is a gap somewhere near the middle where the sow can breast-feed their babies until they are big enough to fend for themselves, and are then taken in order to be killed.
Chickens by far endure the most pain since they are the most consumed animal in America they are more sought out than any other animal. Chickens have the ability to lay eggs and everyone also eats eggs in America. Chickens lay eggs at certain parts of the year only, but these farms abuse them in order to make money. The way they do this is that they provide a special lighting so that chickens are in egg laying mode all year-round. Some eggs are kept so that they can fully grow to make more eggs, some other eggs don't ever get to hatch and are sold. Once the egg hatching hens grow up some painful procedures take place to the chickens, the reason why they do this to chickens is to be able to place a humane certified stamp on their egg cartons to show that these animals are kept under good conditions. Some of these practices include beak searing which is when the beak of the hens is sawed off with no anesthetics, this is very painful for them because their beaks have a lot of nerve endings, this is done so that chickens don't peck each other to death since they are very territorial and pecking would mean that many chickens would die drastically affecting the profit of these big companies.
All of these animals grow in these farms and everything they eat is controlled. Most of the time what they eat is a corn-fed diet which is controlled into certain amounts per meal so that they produce as much as the owners want them too. The food chickens eat are controlled because depending on the amount of food they eat their egg production also varies. Chickens tend to overfeed themselves so farmers normally feed them in separate portions. Once the chickens start producing eggs, their food has to be drastically reduced because the more they eat and the fatter they are, in the long run the less eggs they will be able to make. This form of feeding is called the feedlot system and the way it works is that for days at a time the chicken are starved. Although this method brings in more money than if they were to normally grow, it starves chickens to death at times. The other chicken which live are also on a constant struggle because they as well have to fight for their food. As explained earlier the bee searing is done to the chicken so that they won't kill each other, this also helps the chickens eat. Once chickens get their beaks seared off eating is a very stressful job since their aid to peck corn is gone. Some chickens starve to death since they get bossed around by the bigger chicken because there is no space for them or they don't get there in time in order to be able to catch food.
In the midst of all this farm animals have become subject to different forms of abuse, most of the time being physical abuse. These animals are grown and from birth are grown into an unfortunate reality of death. They are born and taken care until they are grown enough so they can be shipped to different slaughterhouses and be killed to be sold for food. Cows are similar to chickens in that they grow up in cages that they barely fit in and just wait until their scheduled death in a space where they can't even turn around. Perhaps if any other methods were tried in order to stop these abuses there would be some more alternatives, if farmers were to provide anesthetics to their animals before they kill them then they wouldn't feel anything while they are killed. Many other abuses are put on these animals such as taking their beaks off so that they won't kill each other. Imagining what new rules will be made in a few years would show how the abuse would slowly transform into something far greater if we don't stop it.
