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Chicken

The Chicken


Chatty and highly intelligent, chickens suffer under intensive farming for eggs and cheap meat.

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Facts About Chickens

Sociable, chatty and astoundingly intelligent: chickens are fascinating animals with distinct personalities. Their social and communicative behaviour is highly developed. For example, mother hens communicate with their unhatched chicks whilst still inside the egg. Chickens enjoy spending their time by scratching in the grass, pecking at grains on the ground and taking thorough sand baths.

Chicken

10 Facts About Chickens

There's a lot more to chickens than being simple egg and meat suppliers 

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Life Expectancy of Chickens

Life Expectancy of Chickens

The oldest chicken in the world was 22 years old when she died – but in the egg industry, millions of chickens die as day-old chicks

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Chicken in sanctuary

Farmed Animals Gallery

See how they should live in nature

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How Chickens Suffer?

While humans have been rearing chickens for thousands of years for their eggs and meat, today's chickens are genetically bred for a single characteristic: Layer hens for extremely high egg production, and broiler chickens for fast fattening. Industrial poultry farming focuses on the cost-effectiveness, which results in a miserably short and painful life for these 'high-performance' chickens.

A female laying hen in a barn

Laying Hens

With over 300 eggs per year: the high-performance chickens in the egg industry

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Day-old Chicks

Day-Old Chicks: Death on the Assembly Line

How millions of male chicks die in egg production 

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Broiler Chickens

Broiler Chickens

What is the suffering behind chicken meat?

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Eggs

Hidden Cage Eggs in Processed Food

Hens still suffer in cruel battery cages

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Types of Husbandry for Laying Hens

Types of Husbandry for Laying Hens

How do chickens live in a cage, a barn, in free-range or in organic farming systems?

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Chickens being mishandled for transport

Live Road Transport

Millions of chickens are cruelly mishandled and live transported on roads.

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Life expectancy of chickens

Well kept and cared for, a chicken can live up to 15 years. In contrast, battery hens on factory farms live for only around 20 months. During this time, they lay some 300 eggs per year – this strain takes its toll.

What Are We Doing to Help?

FOUR PAWS has been working for decades to improve conditions of farmed animals.

Chicken

FOUR PAWS and the Australian Alliance for Animals

Launch of two-million-strong animal welfare alliance to put animals on political agenda

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Broiler chicken factory farming

Advocacy to End Factory Farming

Support our call for a kinder, safer, and healthier world for animals and people

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Chicken

Campaign to End Live Animal Transport

We are campaigning to move the systems, not animals around the world.

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Chicken

3 Easy Steps to Help Farmed Animals


You don't need to overhaul your life.

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Get to Know About Other Animals

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