One Minute of Truth About a Baby Chick’s First Day of Life, by PETA

by Jennie Richards · Published January 29, 2017 · Updated November 8, 2019

Egg producers try to hide the extreme cold-hearted cruelty behind chicken and egg production. The pleasant images of free-roaming hens and happy roosters featured on egg cartons mask the horrific abuse behind industrial hatcheries and egg factory farms.

This one minute of reality reveals the truth about a baby chicks’ first day of life. See what these newborn babies experience in their first 24 hours, and what life is like from their perspective.

The Cruel Reality Behind Modern Hatcheries

The cruel reality behind modern hatcheries goes something like this: Some 150,000 male chicks hatch every 24 hours on cold industrial steel trays, then they are dumped onto a conveyor belt where the males are sorted from the females, the weak from the healthy—the males and unhealthy chicks are then heartlessly thrown down a chute where they are either ground up alive in large grinders or are macerated and crushed—alive and fully conscious. Hundreds of millions of male chicks die this way each year at production facilities. They are the unwanted by-product of the egg industry. These chicks never experience the warm, safe, protective, nurturing wings of their mothers, only cold stainless steel, rough handling, and brutal machines, then a cruel death at one day old.