US chicken companies pioneered restricting sleep to keep birds eating around the clock.
A new study (Li et al., 2026) recommends giving chickens just 2 hours of darkness nightly to maximize the time they spend eating. The study and photo are Chinese.
We know chickens have far better hapiness with 7–8 hours of darkness to sleep.
But they eat more when they are sleep restricted.
If i had magic powers i would transform the people who make decisions like this into an animal under their own care
if I had magic powers, I would cast a spell that’d make everyone have the common sense to not lose their shit over a unverified picture and unsourced claim.
fuck this a thousand times. hens deserve better.
If you’re not vegan, you support this. You support the torture of animals for 5 minutes of taste “pleasure.” A whole fucking life for 5 minutes of a meal.
I’m not vegan and I don’t support this.
People support this with their wallets. It’s simple supply and demand.
That is nonsense and just plain dumb. Sorry to burst your bubble.
Modern day agriculture is reliant on livestock to keep our current levels of farming efficiency. Farming aimals is a requirement for modern agriculture.
We just eat to much meat, eating no meat at all will cause so much more problems than veganism would solve.
An all or nothing stance is part of the problem though. If doing good is defined in a way that is difficult for people to achieve, they will feel like they can’t do good and give up before they started.
Anything we do to improve the lives of animals or remove some suffering does exactly that.
Going vegan is not difficult.
It is difficult to get adequate nutrition on a vegan diet.
It requires being able to read about nutrition and putting that knowledge into practice - which involves making meal plans that take into account the various mineral and vitamin requirements that we have in order to be healthy.
There are significant accessibility barriers when it comes to eating a healthy, vegan diet.
It is not an easy feat for the abled, and in addition there are factors such as socio-economic status and associated challenges that can make it less accessible for people.
How fast do you shovel down your food? You should enjoy it some more … oh, right, I’d probably also would want it to be over quickly if I had to eat vegan.
That’s what you argue with? Clearly you have no argument against veganism. Is that why animal abusers season their animal flesh with…… plants?
Is that why animal abusers season their animal flesh with…… plants?
Hey, I don’t discriminate. I eat all the kingdoms of life!
i don’t suppose meat that’s bigger but full of stress hormones from the torture of it can be chalked as that much of a win, meat industry.
all animal flesh humans eat is full of stress hormones. Animals don’t walk into a slaughterhouse of their own volition. It’s a horrendous place, and the animals know why they’re there.
The vegans are right.
And chick fil a wants to take the moral high ground with their cow saying eat more chicken
Fuck that an’ all. But how do we know “chickens have far better happiness with 7-8 hours of darkness to sleep”? How does one measure the happiness of a chicken?
Signs of stress, and behaviors that indicate a normative state.
Chickens, when calm and with their flock, make all kinds of sounds and exhibit behaviors like “cuddling”, and even the rare mutual preening. While it’s impossible to point to anything like that and be 100% certain you’ve identified the internal emotional state of an animal, it’s one of those duck things, only chickens. If it looks like a happy chicken, and trills like a happy chicken, might as well say it’s a happy chicken.
If chickens don’t get good rest, you’ll notice all the usual bird stress behaviors appearing. Feather plucking, grumpiness, pecking, angry zipper noises, etc.
So, again, it’s foolhardy to apply human states of mind to anything that can’t speak our language. But some things can be observed and extrapolated to at least be similar.
Side note: the sound a happy chicken makes when cuddling you will either melt your heart, or prove you’re an emotionless wreck. I have wept at that sound
I once had a chicken that would purr like a cat
It’s such a lovely sound :)
Mine only breaks it out when she’s particularly lovey dovey with me. And, obviously, I melt into a puddle when she does lol
Chicken owner here: you can indeed absolutely tell what a chicken is feeling because they have a wide range emotions they will loudly tell you all about.
All my birds are like this. They’re very expressive.
Very, very loudly lol.
I know what the law says in a lot of places (law != morality), that animals are “property,” but I don’t own my companion animals. They co-exist with me.
Flip the question:
How do we measure a chickens suffering?
That question has an intuitive answer if you’re honest enough.
FYI caged hens are no longer common in large parts of the western world and even in the worst countries, like the US, the percentage of caged hens have dropped under 50%. For meat chickens it’s even better with practically zero in cages.
Talking about lightning the EU mandates 6 hours of darkness. Don’t know the US rules. I’m assuming it’s much worse there as it usually is.
Laws vary by state but iirc, California banned caging entirely, including imports. That said, cage free doesn’t mean quality of life.
I notice a huge difference with the more expensive eggs cause real free roaming hens eat lots of bugs and produce better eggs with deep orange yolks. Though, naturally scammers ruin that cause some orange hued eggs are dyed so buyer beware.
They’re not dyed they’re just fed beta carotene supplements. All organs yolks are from beta carotene supplements, deep yellow yolks are the natural color of a nutritionally healthy chicken
Please don’t fall into the ‘cage free is fine’ delusion, because putting so many chickens in a square meter that none of them have personal space is probably about as miserable for them as being in a cage. If anything it can be worse, since chickens can and will attack and eat injured chickens.
Even for meat chickens not in cages, they’re bred to be so big and grow so fast they can hardly walk and many just die of heart attacks as they get too big.
That doesn’t mean they get sunshine, fresh air, green grass.
This guy gives you a good glimpse into the realities of farming.
https://m.youtube.com/@blackbirdcoop
Including calling out the subset of bullshit “free range” farms.
Becoming a radicalized vegetarian over here
cows in dairy, and chickens in egg are abused horribly as well. Go vegan.
edit: Egg layers are often in cages, with 3-4 other birds. In a tiny cage. They have no solid ground to stand on, just bars. So their feet are often horribly deformed. When eggs are hatched, if they’re male, they’re killed at less than a few minutes old, because they are “useless” and will never lay eggs. the male chicks will be ground up alive in something called a macerator (think a blender). if they’re born female, they’ll often end up in the same cages as their mothers. They get their beaks chopped off because they will attack each other from all the suffering. Egg layers in the wild will lay 10-12 eggs a year. They’ve been selectively bred so much that they now lay 1-2 a DAY. That’s 300-400 a year! Imagine ovulating every fucking day, often multiple times a day. It’s torture on them. Egg layers can live for 5-10 years naturally, but because laying 300-400 eggs a year is so horrible on their bodies, they collapse and are then slaughtered (sometimes they just dump them in a hole, and cover it up. While they’re alive). Even in “free range”, there are so many chickens in the shed that their pecking order is severely fucked up. Chickens would normally live in a community of a few birds. In these sheds, they’re crammed in by the thousands. The ammonia from all the urea is so strong it burns their eyes and throat etc. It’s truly truly horrible. Activists have to go in to these sheds with breathing masks because the ammonia is so strong. Chickens are bred and fed so fast to have as much meat as possible as quickly as possible that a lot of chickens will break their legs and collapse or have heart attacks (or both). These chickens will then just lay on the ground and starve to death because they are unable to walk to food.
Also, like all mammals, cows need to be pregnant to give milk. They do not just naturally produce milk all year round (well, dairy cows do, because they’re constantly impregnated, so they give milk nearly all their lives). When the mama cow gives birth, her child will either be killed at a few hours old (if male), or be put into slavery like her mother if she’s a girl. They can live for upwards of 20 years when given the chance, but dairy cows will be slaughtered for low quality meat such as sausages and burgers at just 3-4 years old. Imagine being pregnant almost all your life. Shit is terribly hard on their bodies. When cows cannot do it anymore, they just collapse. These cows are called “downers”. They are dragged out by a truck/forklift by their legs. Then slaughtered.
Imagine your life being so worthless that you’re mistreated for all your life, only to then become a fucking burger or nugget. Holy shit.
It’s suffering all the way down.
#GoVegan
Mother cows will cry out for their babies who were taken from them, never to see them again. All because a bunch of assholes refuse to drink oat milk. Fucking awful.
Yup. The pine for weeks or even months sometimes for their children. They can hear them. They may even be able to see them, but they can’t get to them, because milk. Mammals are incredibly maternal. Imagine having baby after baby being taken from you minutes after birth, never to see them again. Again, suffering all the way down.
There is a mother cow on a sanctuary here in australia (clarabelle). She was rescued from the dairy industry when she was pregnant. She gave birth to her son (valentine, because he was born on valentine’s day). When he was a youngin, Clarabelle would hide him from the workers at the sanctuary, probably because she was afraid he’d be taken from her. She did this for months. Every time the workers would find Valentine, she’d move him. It was heartbreaking.
FYI, the farm is called Edgar’s Mission.
Remind me again how animals don’t have feelings and emotions, and are just unthinking automatons?
We’re all going to become vegetarian because meat is a luxury.
if you want to make an impact on the suffering of animals, veganism is it. vegetarians still support the dairy and egg industries, which may be the most cruel.
I see, I guess I need to look more into it. Every time I try I rage quit because it’s so infuriating.
You don’t need to know about the meat industry horrors or the health impacts of meat or benefits of less meat. Just make small changes like finding dairy alternatives you like, or a meatless recipe you like. From there you can continue to make as few or many additional changes as you like.
I really like this approach it’s less overwhelming.
Start with something. Being vegan is still hard to do in many places. Being vegetarian is thankfully much better than it was 30 years ago.
Back in the day I once traveled the entirety of a certain midwestern state where my food options were essentially coffee and salad. I mean, not really, but also kinda. It’s better now.
you can do it!!
I hope so, thank you
FYI, there are a fair number of vegan communities who are MORE than willing to help you go vegan. Reach out to them if you have any questions.
Yeah, if hell exists these people are going there, fuck, how can you be so disgusting.
Are you vegan? If not, you support these practices.
all of this will inevitably be replaced with lab grown meat anyways.
Oh man, the other day I watched that Netflix documentary “Big Chicken” about the fried chicken industry 🤢
