chicken-catching

Eyes on Animals conducted an inspection of chicken-catching at a breeding-hen farm in The Netherlands. Tonight two poultry-transport trucks and a catching team showed up to load all the birds and send them to slaughter in Poland. The handling was rough. The birds weighed 4.2 kg each. The catchers grabbed them by their legs and hung them inverted, two birds per hand and … [Read more...] about Inspection of chicken-catching in Woudenberg, the Netherlands

EonA team was invited by an egg farmer to his laying-hen farm tonight in Drenthe to check how his 9000 spent-hens will be caught and loaded for transport to slaughter. He was open to our opinion and to exchange ideas on how to improve welfare and to test out the "EonA Dutch method" of catching the birds together with the catching crew. Normally all spent laying-hens are … [Read more...] about Inspection of chicken-catching at a farm in the Netherlands

Spent laying hens are often caught and loaded in a brutal manner. This is not necessarily because chicken-catchers are mean people, but rather because the birds are worth very little at the end of their "productive life" and thus the slaughter industry and supermarkets put enormous pressure to keep costs low. Chicken-catchers are forced to catch and load birds at extreme … [Read more...] about Practicing catching and loading hens in a gentle and upright manner

Today we met with Nepluvi, the Dutch organization representing the interests of the poultry industry. We showed them footage taken during our numerous inspections of how rough spent- hens are handled during catching and loading. We also discussed an educative brochure we made on how the handling of birds can be improved on. Nepluvi is planning, together with chicken … [Read more...] about Meeting with poultry organization Nepluvi to improve welfare during loading