Slashdot Mirror


Chicken Run

Applying modern technology to the task of corraling chickens for the slaughterhouse results in a chicken-catching machine that surprisingly is not as gruesome as it appears. Never thought about a "chicken vacuum" before? After reading this, you won't be able to get it out of your head. :) Sadly, scientists are already researching ways for the chickens to fight back.

58 of 550 comments (clear)

  1. It had to be said... by CptChipJew · · Score: 0, Funny

    Who needs machinery when you can just choke your chicken?

    --
    Vonal Declosion
  2. If they could ramp this up… by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    â¦to toddler size, this could revolutionize the daycare industry.

  3. Somehow ... by BillsPetMonkey · · Score: 5, Funny

    KFC will never seem the same again with Colonel Sanders driving that thing.

    --
    "It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
    1. Re:Somehow ... by Fishstick · · Score: 2, Funny

      KFC? Chicken? Everyone knows the reason they changed their name from "Kentucky Fried Chicken" to "KFC" is because they no longer use chickens in their meals.

      Kentucky Fried Chicken has become KFC. Does
      anybody know why? We thought the real reason
      was because of the "FRIED" food issue. It's
      not. The reason why they call it KFC is
      because they cannot use the word chicken
      anymore. Why? KFC does not use real chickens.
      They actually use genetically manipulated
      organisms.


      C'mon... I saw it on my innernet, so it must be true!

      --

      There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
      Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.

  4. Re:but it's more humane! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm all for reducing the "panic, fear, and horror" of chickens. Animals that die scared don't taste as good, because the chemical soup that gets released into the bloodstream (adrenaline and so on) gives the meat a tainted flavor. Yuck.

    Animals should die happy. They taste better that way.

  5. McDonald's by MrCocktail · · Score: 5, Funny

    McDonald's Corp. is encouraging its chicken suppliers to mechanically collect at least half the birds it buys by year's end.

    McDonald's actually uses real chicken?

    1. Re:McDonald's by Doppler00 · · Score: 4, Funny

      But the McNuggets do contain:
      dimethylpolysiloxane
      sodium acid pyrophosphate
      sodium aluminum phosphate
      monocalcium phosphate

      whatever those are!

    2. Re:McDonald's by jd_esguerra · · Score: 2, Funny

      But the McNuggets do contain:
      dimethylpolysiloxane
      sodium acid pyrophosphate
      sodium aluminum phosphate
      monocalcium phosphate


      Oh, thank god! I was afraid I wasn't getting enough dimethylpolysiloxane in my normal diet. So a 9-piece a day and I should stop foaming, right?

  6. Bawk? Are you Jhn Clux0r? by Tackhead · · Score: 5, Funny
    Chickenator Three: Rise of the Machines!

    Looks like a cross between an EE grad student's robotics project and something out of the Transformers.

    Hook up a flamethrower to it, and we've got a mobile autonomous BBQ station. Where's Mark Pauline and Survival Research Labs when we need 'em? Bring on the Chickenators!

  7. Re:but it's more humane! by RollingThunder · · Score: 4, Funny

    New worst job: chicken masturbator

    Makes the chickens die euphoric, for the best taste ever! Or something.

    *shudders*

  8. Sure... by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Funny

    McDonald's actually uses real chicken?

    For the McRib!

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  9. quoteness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Mr. Tweedy: What is it?
    Mrs. Tweedy: It's a pie machine, you idiot. Chickens go in, pies come out.
    Mr. Tweedy: Ooh, what kind of pies?
    Mrs. Tweedy: Apple.
    Mr. Tweedy: My favorite.
    Mrs. Tweedy: Chicken pies, you great lummox!

  10. New .sig for me! by Theaetetus · · Score: 3, Funny
    "We support using machines that reduce the panic, fear and horror of chickens,"

    Horror of chickens... I like that.

    -T

  11. O/T: Duck Hearding by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Several years ago, I visited Oxford university on an open day. One of the students was developing an electric sheep-dog as a final year project. Since they did not have a ready supply of sheep, they were testing it by making it round up ducks. I can't help feeling that these two projects might be related...

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  12. Re:Bawk? Are you Jhn Clux0r? by DavidBrown · · Score: 4, Funny

    Please don't refer to it as the "Chickenator". The technical term you should be using is the "Chicken Zamboni".

    --
    144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
  13. Already got that by CausticWindow · · Score: 4, Funny

    My appartment is about 1800 cubic feet.

    There are exactly zero chikens in my appartment.

    So: chiken density = 0 / 1800 = 0 = chicken vacuum

    --
    How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
    1. Re:Already got that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Hmmmm, one might almost suspect that, for a given volume, the density of live chickens is quantized...

    2. Re:Already got that by CausticWindow · · Score: 4, Funny

      Any bigger than that and I would have to work hard keeping the chickens out.

      --
      How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
  14. Re:but it's more humane! by frankthechicken · · Score: 2, Funny

    Well, I guess its more humane than using my Dyson. Still I would've thought that the noise coming from that contraption's eggshaust and engine would've scared them away before they had a chance to be sucked in. I mean eggsactly how bloated have these chickens been raised, so as not to run at first sight from that thing?

    Sorry.

  15. Chicken Run by EngMedic · · Score: 2, Funny

    Oblig. Chicken Run quote:
    "chickens go in...pies come out!"

    --
    filter: +3. Hey, look! all the trolls went away!
  16. Re:but it's more humane! by flyneye · · Score: 4, Funny

    It could be worse. Boeing has a "chicken cannon" to test impact of birds on jet engines.(hahahaha I wanna be the guy runnin that one!)

    --
    *Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
  17. Re:in the long term..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I hate to be the one that breaks this to you, but the chikens are only picked up once.

  18. what if tolkien... by QEDog · · Score: 2, Funny

    The chicken, sunlight coruscating off its radiant yellow-white coat of feathers, approached the dark, sullen asphalt road and scrutinized it intently with its obsidian-black eyes. Every detail of the thoroughfare leapt into blinding focus: the rough texture of the surface, over which countless tires had worked their relentless tread through the ages; the innumerable fragments of stone embedded within the lugubrious mass, perhaps quarried from the great pits where the Sons of Man labored not far from here; the dull black asphalt itself, exuding those waves of heat which distort the sight and bring weakness to the body; the other attributes of the great highway too numerous to give name. And then it crossed it.

    --
    "There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
  19. Version for humans by Animats · · Score: 4, Funny
    The large version, for riot control, will be really something.

    "The scoops are on the way!" - Soylent Green.

  20. Chicken Run! by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 2, Funny

    I don't want to be a pie. I don't like gravy.

    --
    Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  21. Re:Build a better chicken trap... by ErikTheRed · · Score: 2, Funny

    Finally! A technological advancement in processing animals that doesn't have the PETA people crying fowl... heh... heh...

    --

    Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
  22. Re:but it's more humane! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    New worst job: chicken masturbator
    Correction: Assistant chicken masturbator.
  23. Can't resist... by HungWeiLo · · Score: 2, Funny

    Never thought about a "chicken vacuum" before?

    Must...not...make..."suck"..."cock"...jokes...

    --
    There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
  24. Re:but it's more humane! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Ahh, you mean a fluffer?

  25. Re:but it's more humane! by cheshiremackat · · Score: 4, Funny

    You do realise that all chickens are female, right? So a chicken masterbater is more like the chicken fscker/ book mobile guy from southpark... -CMK

    --
    Bad spellers of the world untie!
  26. Re:but it's more humane! by cyril3 · · Score: 1, Funny

    Is it true that boeing was worried when they first used the machine that all their jet engines would have to be redesigned until they realized that the techs wheren't thawing the chicken out before use.

  27. What ever happened to KISS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    What a contraption, a $200K contraption.

    Why not just scoop out the building? Some simple chicken wire like "bull dozer" that starts at one end of the building and slowly nudges all in its path towards the business end.

    After all, this thing just nudges them along.

    Some simple machinery (way less than $200K worth) along 2 sides of the barn, a 6' "plow" between the two, and a hole at one end. As an X' by Y' barn slowly becomes 0 by 0, chickens emerge.

    I mean, hell, if your going to put God damned EVERYBODY out of work you should at least do it as cheaply as you can.

    Patent pending.

  28. Re:I Modded Down 5 European Posts by cyril3 · · Score: 4, Funny

    You think we read this stuff for comment by the elite levels of the US corporate and academic sector. In Europe and Australia /. is preloaded in the Opera hotlist under Humour.

  29. Chicken Matrix by appleLaserWriter · · Score: 4, Funny

    What else needs to be done to make chickens into batteries?

  30. Re:but it's more humane! by Doc+Hopper · · Score: 5, Funny

    The worst job I've ever heard of is a friend of mine who works at a pig farm. His job is to "plug in" the male pigs to the female pigs because the male pigs are too lazy to do it themselves.

    True story, not kidding. And the guy lives, curiously enough, in "Beaver, Utah". Gross job, man.

  31. Re:Seriously by eht · · Score: 2, Funny

    because there isn't much of a back page

    it could be dumped to section, but almost no one reads those unless you have the collapse section option turned on which makes everything front page

  32. Asounding Improvement! by utahjazz · · Score: 4, Funny

    A five-man crew using a mechanical harvester can do the work of eight men

    My god, it's like something out of science fiction.

    1. Re:Asounding Improvement! by Concerned+Onlooker · · Score: 2, Funny
      Yes, I believe that's what Dave Bowman said when he encountered the monolith floating out there around Jupiter:

      "My God, it's full of chickens"

      --
      http://www.rootstrikers.org/
  33. Re:Seriously by secolactico · · Score: 2, Funny

    i Seriously don't see how this made the front page

    I guess we could use a "farmhands.slashdot.org"

    --
    No sig
  34. Gladiator by maudite · · Score: 2, Funny

    I love chicken catching. The only way to do it with finesse is to dress up like gladiator. I hold a net with one hand and a frog gig with the other. I pretend the frog gig is my trident. I usually have a mp3 cd with nothing but canned crowd yells and Conan music. Talk about a rush!

  35. Re:but it's more humane! by uncoveror · · Score: 3, Funny

    Tyson and Pilgrim's Pride could save themselves a lot of time and trouble by switching to Chick'N. They will just need to contact New Dawn Biotech in Alberta to negotiate licensing.

    --
    The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
  36. Re:but it's more humane! by emo+boy · · Score: 2, Funny

    They only shoot dead chickens. They previously used gelatin but it didn't model chickens properly.

  37. Re:but it's more humane! by Anne_Nonymous · · Score: 5, Funny

    >> New worst job: chicken masturbator

    What do they do, choke them to death?

  38. Re:but it's more humane! by metamanda · · Score: 3, Funny

    I had a friend who used to have to collect bull semen. Part of the process involves stimulating its prostate with a cattle prod. Think about that for a second. Think about where that cattle prod has to go. That's a pretty scary job.

  39. Re:as someone who has caught chickens for vaccinat by Concerned+Onlooker · · Score: 2, Funny
    Basically, I can't see this replacing cheap student labour. Just my two cents.

    Just two cents? Student labor is cheaper than I thought....

    --
    http://www.rootstrikers.org/
  40. Re:Chicken maturity matters? by petsounds · · Score: 3, Funny

    All they are is a population which has been bred (selected) for certain traits; I doubt very much that they feel any more discomfort in their lives than laying hens, and probably less.

    Thanks for the insight, Agent Smith.

  41. Chicken Fluffer by repetty · · Score: 4, Funny

    Actually, the correct term is chicken "fluffer".

  42. Chicken Hypnosis by Scrameustache · · Score: 4, Funny

    Berry tried everything to force the birds to move under their own power. He flashed strobe lights in their eyes...

    Anybody else get the feeling he also tried a pendulum, but won't admit it?

    --

    You can't take the sky from me...

  43. Re:but it's more humane! by Red+Pointy+Tail · · Score: 3, Funny

    Poor chicken.

    For its suffering, it hope it will be cannonized....

    (ducks to avoid flying chicken)

  44. Re:I've done it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Yeah, but no-one ever felt satisfied eating the sonofabitch either.

  45. Re:Permaculture Chickens and Cows by Zork+the+Almighty · · Score: 2, Funny

    Better yet, combine your two ideas. Robot cows could automatically follow the cages, and a computerized system of pastures would keep the gates circulating, violin, you have a scale that systems very well.

    --

    In Soviet America the banks rob you!
  46. Chickens are people, damn you! by Wynken+de+Word · · Score: 4, Funny

    The scoops are coming!

    I missed the 'e' in 'humane' from this line in the article:

    "Starting in the early 1980s, Britain's Silsoe Research Institute received about $200,000 a year from the government to design a humane harvesting machine."

  47. chicken cannon / dethaw by lingqi · · Score: 4, Funny

    I was told by an aquaintance who worked at a major airplane engine manufacture stories about this. (note to everyone - Boeing actually DOES NOT MAKE ENGINES - so it would be quite silly if they did compliance and validations on the engines as much as engine manufactures, no?)

    Anyhoo - apparently the method of the "chicken cannon" uses anything from a quail to a small turkey. They bird is stuck in a ball-like styrofoam shell, and when the entire apparatus leaves the cannon, the shell disintegrates, and the dead bird flies toward the intake of a full-power jet engine at maybe 3-500 mph.

    The thing is, though - unless you have some REALLY big birds, they (dethawed) don't do any damage to the engine at all. The highspeed photograph would show in one frame the chicken flying toward the blades, and the next frame the head is chopped off, and the next part of the neck, one after the tip of the chest, etc. Apparently the blades are going so fast that the chicken's inertia alone will let it "float" while being chopped up and spit out through the back.

    The humorous part is when they lent the chicken-cannon to france rail companies to test their high-speed trains. Apparently when the french set up the cannon and fired the small turkey toward the front-windshield, giddy with anticipation of everything going well, the bird went through the widshield, punched a hole in the dummy sitting in the operator's seat, went through the wall behind the dummy operator, and landed about halfway down the train car after causing quite some havoc within it. Everyone was scratching there heads with jaws to the ground (obviously you would not want to drive this thing if it will leave you a turkey-sized entry+exit-wound). Eventually it turned out that it was because they only (!) thawed the bird for 6 hours or something... When they did it with a proper bird it damaged the wind(bird)shield but the driver remained intact.

    moral of the story? you can hear some interesting stuff from aerospace industry engineers.

    --

    My life in the land of the rising sun.

  48. Easier way to catch chickens by earthforce_1 · · Score: 2, Funny

    A former neighbour told me this trick...

    He used a small ball of twine, which he would coat with suet and toss into the chicken pen. One of the chickens would inevitably swallow the twine, and pass it after a few days. He would then collect roll the remaining twine back into a ball, add some more suet and toss it back to the chickens. Another chicken would soon swallow the suet covered ball, which was still attached to the first chicken. After a week or so you have a whole chain of connected chickens on a rope following each other around head to tail. Makes them real easy to catch!

    --
    My rights don't need management.
  49. Re:but it's more humane! by rc5-ray · · Score: 2, Funny

    I grew up just north of Beaver, Utah. My hometown's name is "Fillmore". Look it up-it's on the interstate.

    When asked where I was from, I could calmly respond:

    "I'm from the Fillmore-Beaver area!"

  50. Ethernet cows? by mt-biker · · Score: 2, Funny

    "It's a snap to coax barnyard animals like pigs and cattle..."

    Anyone else read that the way I did? :)

  51. A what? by richie2000 · · Score: 2, Funny
    Britain's Silsoe Research Institute received about $200,000 a year from the government to design a humane harvesting machine

    Anyone else read that as "human harvesting machine"?

    --
    Money for nothing, pix for free
  52. Re:but it's more humane! by fucksl4shd0t · · Score: 4, Funny

    You do realize that even people on death row have to be killed humanely, right?

    For the same reasons, actually. Stressing a person before killing them pumps them up full of hormones (adrenaline) that totally screws up the flavor. Also makes the meat pretty tough.

    Actually, I'm surprised there are this many comments and I'm the first to make a cannibalism joke.

    --
    Like what I said? You might like my music