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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.
Some of the biggest fans are animal-rights groups, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The machines are far more gentle on the birds than human handlers are. "We support using machines that reduce the panic, fear and horror of chickens," says Karen Davis of United Poultry Concerns, a Machipongo, Va., group that opposes eating chickens and also runs a sanctuary for a few lucky birds that manage to escape the farms (usually by falling off a truck).
They do realize the bird's final destination, right?
Mike
Is this the alternative to Palladium that Researchers have been looking for?
...and the world will come clucking at your door.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
â¦to toddler size, this could revolutionize the daycare industry.
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
I personally would like to see more effort and ingenuity go into finding ways to kill the birds more humanely. I for one wouldn't want to go by being dipped in electrified water *then* beheaded. Just the beheading will do me, if it has to be done.
Don't get me wrong - I support the eating of meat, for those who choose to (like me) - I just wish we could do it in more sensible, humane ways.
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?
will chicken eventually learn to avoid the machine after a while?
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!
I can see the list of demands already: 1. No chicken meat on the lunch menu. 2. Will not run more than 1000 meters per day in pursuit of chickens. 3. Safety equipment, including crotch protectors, in case the birds suddenly realise where in the hell they're going.
McDonald's actually uses real chicken?
For the McRib!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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!
I'd hate to be on the QA team for that one.
"30 birds killed in 5 minutes. That's a bug. P1, too, I'd say."
The article says it's smelly work, too.
No thanks.
Editors... :-)
This is more of a "News for Farmers, Stuff that Moos" story. But from a technological viewpoint, it's an interesting story. I for one didn't realize that chickens bred for meat were actually allowed to run free (albeit in a darkened warehouse). It's actually more "humane" than I had thought.
But this isn't really an advance in treating chickens more humanely. The farmers profit because of 1) reduced labor costs; 2) reduced worker's comp claims; and 3) reduced "breakage" allowing them to send more chickens to market. I can see why animal rights groups would be supportive of this technology, but it's really only a change on the level of replacing the axe-man with the guillotine.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
Horror of chickens... I like that.
-T
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
Anyone else seen Baraka?
Among other glorious and terrible images, there are shots from a chicken processing plant. It shows thousands of chicks tumbling off a conveyor belt, swirling down a giant metal funnel and having their beaks burned.
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!
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
"Looking like a combination airport baggage carousel and tank, the devices can capture 150 birds a minute. That's as many as a team of eight skilled men can corral."
So they plan on putting more people in the heartland out of much needed work...
Where will my future job prospects end... if an decent IT worker cant get a job catching chickens, then all is lost
hmmm maybe they need someone to network these together(beowulf anyone) and build AI then the robots to do the dirty work for us... then we can sit back and watch as the machines uprise, start using this on humans and build their own city somewhere in the desert of Saudi Arabia called 01(obligatory Matrix reference)
moo.
... if you see one of these coming, you've been laid off.
-pyrrho
Why not add some of the features of the robots from BattleBots?
You have that one with the flamethrower that could cook 'em. Then there's the one with the big saw blades - 'nuff said... And what about the one with the giant hammer? Pre-tenderized chicken bits. Aw yeah.
Then all you'd need is a machine to dredge 'em in eggs 'n' breading and fry 'em up...
Oblig. Chicken Run quote:
"chickens go in...pies come out!"
filter: +3. Hey, look! all the trolls went away!
--Chag
Speaking of chickens, someone pulled a prank at my school today. They unleashed four chickens in the cafeteria. That and some insects, too.
What's with all the chicken mania today?
Chickens overrunning schools AND a chicken catcher on the same day... coincidence? I think not.
- shazow
as a job in my teens:
1. It is probably one of the worst jobs in North America. It stinks like ammonia all day in the barn, it's hot, hard to breathe, and they leave the lights off to calm the birds. (picture rolling yourself up in a thick blanket that 30 people have urinated on, and stay in their all day with the heat cranked up in the house). When you get home from work, you have to strip naked before you go in your home, and hose off in the yard, or the smell gets everywhere. (I took to burning clothes at one point outside.)
2. Unfourtunately, I can't possibly see this machine keeping up with a human. When yo get good at it, you can catch and hold 6 birds at a time. And, regardless of what the article says, it's very easy to catch a chicken in a dark barn with practice. It's just hard work.
Basically, I can't see this replacing cheap student labour. Just my two cents.
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
I read recently about an experiment in permaculture, which is the science of making food production ecologically sustainable. The Chinese have been making an art of it for thousands of years, with complicated interlocking cultivation systems, where the waste from one part is always recycled in some other part.
In this system, chickens were kept in small flocks in 20x20 foot covered cages. The cages were on wheels. Small herds of cows were also kept, in constant rotation among many small pastures. After the cows were done in one pasture, the chicken cages were rolled in. The chickens broke the cow patties apart looking for bugs, which were plentiful. This allowed the cow manure to break down faster, resulting in quicker regrowth of the grass, as well as lower rates of disease among the cows. The chickens were healthier as well, and got to run about and hunt for bugs, which if I were a chicken, I would vastly prefer to living in some overcrowded factory. Overall, the production of both beef and chicken increased dramatically over other organic ranching methods, putting it on a par with non-organic methods.
The inventor of the system based the idea off of the fact that in nature, herds of wild ungulates are always followed by flocks of birds. Pretty clever, eh? Another thing: you don't need a robot chicken catcher, you just wheel the cage up to the slaughterhouse and pull the chickens in with a net.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
PETA is starting to lose it's integrity. They're supposed to be protecting animals from unnecessary death in the first place, but instead they're supporting this new technology simply because it's more "humane"? What different is it for the chickens that are going to die? They get spared from a few seconds of torture? I know ever second counts, but this questions the very existance of Peta.
And that's not all. Peta is sending it's message to protect and save animals via strippers, pr0nstars and supermodels. What surprises me is that there's no feminists who oppose this.
It seems Peta is in a very desperate situation trying to save the lives of animals. I, myself have always been vegetarian simply because it is morally wrong to take the life of one being only to benefit yourself.
The recent SARS outbreak is just one implication of factory farming. Then there's foot and mouth disease, mad cow and what not.
Peta should be advocating the fact that animals are sentient beings, not a renewable resource. And for those pathetic scientists who even created such a device should deserve death at the least, using their own stupid machines. Go ahead, FLAME ME. But it's the truth.
"The scoops are on the way!" - Soylent Green.
Anyone remember Baseketball from the creators of South Park? There is a scene in that where they are vacuuming chickens...
I am not stubborn. I am right!
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.
a potential new job for all those unemployed guys that drive the machines that suck up golf balls...
It was forced to do so by the chicken-hole principle.
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
Early devices included the chicken vacuum, which sucked up birds and shot them through tubes to waiting trucks. But the birds tended to plug up the tubes and turn somersaults as they traveled inside the contraption. We had too many die on us, recalls Buddy Burruss, vice president of operations at Tip Top Poultry Inc. of Marietta, Ga., which tested and quickly abandoned the pneumatic approach two decades ago.
Hahahahahahah, he's right, I'm not going to be able to get the image of somersaulting chickens getting sucked up in a huge chicken vacuum cleaner out of my head! When they got plugged up, did all the chickens start getting sucked into a giant nasty chicken hair-ball like mass??
I was expecting something like Ginger teaching the chickens how to fly.
--
Karma is overrated, whoring is ok.
I did chicken catching once when visiting relatives out in the country. I must say that chickens are very stupid.
Imagine a large barn with chickens covering the entire floor. As chickens are removed from the barn the remaining chickens do NOT move into the empty space, they remain packed together as the barn empties. There is no chasing involved.
The chickens do not react at all until you grab them by the legs, the most common reaction is to peck, scratch or shit on your hands. And it stank.
I do remember that I was paid well (for a 13 year old) for a few hours work and the farmers wife had a very nice breakfast ready for us when we were done.
I certanly wouldn't want to do it for a living.
now all they need is for it to catch humans and we've got any number of sci-fi movies come to life...
----
http://www.hellection.com
OMG!! Some one HAS to upload a video of this...
forget ellen fliess, forget that porky starwars geek, this could be the newest craze!! this thing looks AWSOME!!
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
By the time a chicken hits your plate it has been de-beaked, pumped with hormones, lived in huge stressful flocks (natural flock size is arounf 12 birds), denied perching, gathered then inhumanely slaughtered.
Seems to me like the major reason for introducing this device is the mighty buck. The industry is pushing the humane side, though in fact this contributes only a small fraction of the inhumanity in raising chickens.
Another approach would be to eat ducks. Ducks are far more stupid than chickens and are far less stress prone too. However, ducks don't produce meat as fast, so the mighty buck kicks in again....
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Yes. Animals are treated cruelly in factory farms.
Anyone who wishes to view the way that chickens are treated in captivity can look here. Granted, this is a video of the way that Kentucky Fried Chicken treats their birds, and they are known to be particularly cruel.
Some interesting facts about chickens raised for eggs and/or slaughter:
Percent of laying hens that suffer broken bones in their cage: 30%
Male chicks (from laying hens) killed per year by suffocation, gas, or grinding in the U.S.: 200 million
Male chicks used per day for fertilizer, chicken food, and pet food in Canada: 40000 (Note the cannibalism here. Also, cow parts are fed to chicks, and chick parts are fed to cows, which can possibly lead to the spread of BSE ("Mad Cow"))
Broiler chickens that have trouble walking: 90%
Chickens still alive at the scald tank: 20%
Not to mention the fact that the agriculture industry is the number one polluter in America.
(Plus, in case you didn't know, chicken has more cholesterol than beef.)
I'm glad to see this machine in action, because it will reduce the suffering, but I'd rather see people just stop eating meat.
It amazes me how many people are bothered by the scene in 'Roger and Me' where the woman kills and strips the rabbit, yet they still eat meat...Does the end justify the means?
-- End vegan propoganda --
Mouse: That's exactly my point. Exactly! Because you have to wonder: how do the machines know what Tasty Wheat tasted like? Maybe they got it wrong. Maybe what I think Tasty Wheat tasted like actually tasted like oatmeal, or tuna fish. That makes you wonder about a lot of things. You take chicken, for example: maybe they couldn't figure out what to make chicken taste like, which is why chicken tastes like everything!
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
mfg website (uses frames - scroll top frame down for selections)
bigger picture
specifications page
my sig:
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Here's a much better look at this contraption (http://www.lewismola.com/) including a person in the frame to give it much better scale!
an Air Force research base near where I live has a Chicken Gun. It shoots frozen chickens out of a GIGANTIC pipeline in order to test airplane cockpits for collisions with birds. You can't even believe the gore and the smell on a nice hot summer day.
The first time I heard the phrase 'rendered chicken parts,' the first thing that came to mind was computer-generated 3D graphics of chicken parts.
*shudder*
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.
The experiment in the second link is very interesting, but not for the reason that the media picked it up. They're talking about this development as "they've turned the genes for teeth back on in chickens!", but that's not really true.
:-)
The scientists implanted mouse cells in chicken embryos. The mouse cells then migrated to the jaw and started growing teeth. This means that the creatures aren't really chickens, they are "chimeras" -- a combination of two species.
Despite the headlines, in other words, these are NOT CHICKENS. They're not even birds.
It is interesting, though, because it shows that the chicken genome still has the information for teeth in it. Apparently, chicken cells ignore the 'make teeth' command, and the mouse cells don't. (I don't know whether mouse cells had mouse DNA in them, or if they had the chicken DNA implanted.)
It's a long way from here to what the media seems to imply. REAL chickens-with-teeth are a heck of a lot harder than chimera-chickens-with-mouse-teeth.
Ergo, I can promise you that next week's KFC will have only bones left over.
I think the Chicken pickers would be happy to lose this job, especially at 21 yrs old. Maybe he could go join the Transistor Sorters Union. I hear they pay 1 per 1000 transistors.
Looks like it is time to replace your Personality Module. You are a bit to clingy, guess I better replace your fuser to
That article about chickens/teech = baldness cure reads just like a randomly generated SimCity article. Ack - here's hoping President bush stays away from that 'Disaster' menu!
Ryan Fenton
Great! Now the Department of Agriculture will want to implement a dental care programs for rural chickens.
I don't see where killing a chicken in a factory is any less horifying to the chicken than being killed by wolf, fox, mink, etc.
science is a religion
Picard is nothing if he isn't bald!
Karma: Food Fight (Mostly affected by Date Plate).
I'd rather invest money to individual cages than to catching machine.
Less is more !
So you think your job sucks. Then you read something like this.
Only a few months?!?! Hell, I wouldn't last til lunch. So this is what migrant workers are for...
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
McDonalds standard issue...
Kobe beef.
I remember seeing it on Food Network... The guy they were interviewing was happy to eat a bit of it raw, which the food reporter and cameraman watched with some apparent amazement.
I've tried raw steak, and unfortunately it tastes pretty much like it smells - not too enticing. So to be enjoyable, that stuff must be dramatically different.
Or maybe I didn't add enough salt.
0x0D 0x0A
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!1!11!! I've DONE this job, lots, catching chickens in the dark and putting them in cages. It's one of the "fowl"er jobs out there. If at all possible, it's scheduled on new moon nights,or as close as possible, as dark as possible. On one farm where I worked doing this (back early 70's,pure fox platinum blonde farmers daughter, weekend job, etc, you know how it is....), we'd even ride up in the front end loader and put a hood over the public street light on the road out front, to further make it darker. The darker it is, the less they freak out. Next, the farmer, who was a closet alky and hid bottles from his old lady all over the farm, would give all us young fool morons dragooned into this cluck burger transportation service multiple shots of his wild turkey. Thus fortified, we are off! You slide into the chicken house, bend over, feel along the floor, find a chicken leg and snatch it, holding it with one finger, you find another, and another, three in each hand finally, for a total of 6. Then you trudge outside to the truck, load these now non-sleepy bundles of flapping indignation into wooden cages, then someone else would stack the cages. Back and forth and forth and back, on into the wee hours. This was BUHZILLIONS of chickens per chicken house, usually over 20,000 or so. That farm was slightly different from the story, these were egg layers going to the battery cages, before that, free ranging in open houses. Same deal though, ya gots to get cackleberry squatter from point A to B. Each chicken ran around 6-7 lbs. Do the math by the end of the night of what you probably carried in livestock tonnage, maybe 4 or 5 guys doing it.
I think I made a whopper 2 clams an hour back then. If it wasn't for that girl, well, I just don't know how long I would have done that job...
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.
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.
What else needs to be done to make chickens into batteries?
Is this news for nerds? Does it matter?
seriously bored nerds, perhaps. But it does not matter one bit to me.
What is this doing on Slashdot?
Taco and Hemos must be on vacation or something.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
On this page is a movie from a competing system, using rubber fingers.
Bas
If you look close, theres a hand sticking out for help in the bottom part of the chicken catcher. Kinda funny.
Hook up a flamethrower to it,...
...and a FRIKKIN' laser beam!
It's nice to see technology being applied to making the food industry more humane. However, I must use this opportunity to bitch about the quality of meat in the US. The poultry here, at least the stuff you buy at Giant or Safeway, sucks. Totally bland and tasteless. My family lived in Bangladesh until I was 4 or so. There, it takes six months to get a chicken ready for sale. Here, thanks to all the growth hormones, it takes a few weeks. In the process, the chicken is robbed of all flavor. When we moved here, it took me months to get used to the chicken here. Even now, the only way I can stand it is to cook it in tons of spices or deep fry it in grease.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
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.
For those interested, here's a link to the product page, with a handy dandy video of it in action.
Is there anything about broilers (the 8-week wonders) being so young that makes them more pitiful than the other ends of the spectrum? 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.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Apparently there is all kinds of high quality beef in Japan prohibited from exporting, something about protecting its domestic beef industry. The restaurant buys the entire cow live, and they do all the work in-house. Everything of the cow is used - the menus are made out of the leather of their previous purchases, the bones are used for soup. Those wacky japanese love their stuff fresh..
From the article, it sounds like the five man team beats the eight man solos because it not only catches them, but automatically plunks 'em into cages too. That part of the process can't be fast when you have six chickens per hand. :)
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!
It's fast. Someone stands at the barn door with a stack of cages. You pass two handfuls of chickens to him, he plunks em in a cage, and when it's full fires it up to the guy who owns the truck. The driver is responsible for placing the full crates, but doesn't touch the chickens. As far as I was concerned, the worst part was having all that pissy dust collect in your eyes... used to clean my eyes with a Q-tip after I got home so they wouldn't be glued together in the morning.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Dude! Skateboarding is not a Crime! Actual I would support getting rid of them as I ride street (bmx) and the the damn thrashers will hog a nice grind rail like nobody's business...
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
more info at the lewismola site. http://www.lewismola.com/
...day in & day out' reliability."
t ml
Also from the site....
"The PH2000 is powered by a 4-stroke Kubota 3300-TE. This engine has twice as much horsepower as any mechanical harvester on the market. This extra power significantly reduces engine strain which results in greatly extended machine life. Due to its combination of the Kubota 3300-TE along with high quality hydraulic, electronic and belt systems, the PH2000 has proven to have unparalleled 'on the job
and a detailed pic here..
http://www.lewismola.com/lmfrmspecphoto.h
Heil Sig! -Rob
I grew up on a turkey farm. We had to ship (actually truck) the turkeys to the plant we contracted with, where they were butchered. The system the used, and still do, is basically a big enclosed conveyor belt. The turkeys are "chased" onto the bottom of it, and then are carried up to the top, where two people push the turkeys into cages on a semi trailer.
It's not as fancy as this contraption, but it works. Something more efficient would be nice, but it would actually be hard to accomadate a machine like this. Plus, I doubt that Jennie-O Turkey Store wants to cough up the money for those when these 15-20 year old contraptions still work.
In new zealand , over the last 7 or 8 years , there has been a move by farmers to catch the chickens in a diferent manner. Instead of grabbing the little fuckers by the feet , we now catch them by their bodies , basicly putting both hands around their bodies over the wings , and lifting them up that way. You can catch 2 birds at once via this method , you just push them together side by side. They are as placid as pudding when using this method , and its just as fast :) I assume that the industry world wide is moving to this method , i can only speak for nz. Any fellow chicken farmers/geeks out there can back me up? But i want this chicken catching machine , it looks fucking cool >8)
Thank God Afro-Man had that hit, "Then I got High". Otherwise, with this thing, he'd be royally screwed out of a job!
Did it work out with the girl ?
I was involved with another kind of chicken vacuum a few years ago.
It was basically a large stainless steel drum with a bolt-on lid and a sharpened pipe with a butterfly valve sticking straight up from the lid. The drum was drawn down to a 14 psi vacuum.
A fresh, headless bird would be impaled tail-down on the pipe, the valve tripped and BUCK-AWWK!
It was an offal job, but someone had to do it.
Hey, Mom! Is it beer, yet?
Just two cents? Student labor is cheaper than I thought....
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
A text-based adventure here
Your brain is not a computer.
Ok, they can go on the norther border, too. As George Washington once said, the best way to protect our freedom is to protect our borders and keep the illegals out. No "freedom" is involved in crossing our borders w/out permission (which I am all for granting), so there is no irony in my sig at all.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
I wonder if the ill-fated chicken-vac looked anything like the one in BASEketball? I always got a laugh out of the scene because of it.
Foomp! Ba-kaaak!
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
It's mmm-mmm good! (tm)
Yes beef. Beef which is the leading cause of food poisoning in the US since it's full of additives. Go ahead, enjoy yourself. Just don't try sueing anyone if you find it a bit poisoned.
"Old MacDonald had an agricultural real estate tax abatement." Slashdot is going agricultural on our asses.
I guess, on chicken farms at least, that 20,000 is a sufficiently close approximation to a buhzillion (which, as we all know, is 1,000 gazillions or 1,000,000 bajillions).
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Actually, the correct term is chicken "fluffer".
Hey! It even says that it Helps Hot Boning. Ooooh baby!
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...
I was with her about 2.5 years or so. She went away to art school,then switched and went into nursing, We both drifted apart, not enough day to day seeing each other, both young people, etc, we found new friends. We stayed cordial. She was a fox, one of only two girls I ever met who had that naturally "white" sort of blond hair.
It sure felt like buhzillions! You have to remember, too, as you are carrying this weight, it's also the distances involved in walking back and forth. Chicken houses are at least 300 feet long, those were closer to 500 if I am remembering correctly. The last ones I worked at, earlier this year and late last year (different job, part time weekends picking eggs), are 400 feet long. Now walk back and forth all night long inside that distance, 50% of the time carrying six cluckers, ya, it gets into the real physical work range. It has to be many miles of walking carrying weight in your hands. And that doesn't count the slipping and falling down and getting slimed part either. Tell you, we should be thankful that our chickens at the store or restaurant are still so inexpensive to purchase given the work combined with the extremely dismal pay at that end of the industry. The workers in the plants have it fairly rough as well. Personally,it wouldn't bother me a bit if chickens only costed 25 or 50 cents more, and that loot got distributed to the people doing the really nasty work, they sure would appreciate it.
I have mixed feelings on the machine in the article, I understand that automation is here to stay, I also feel it's necessary to keep some sort of actual contact with the idea that these are living creatures, and should be treated with the idea of compassionate husbandry, and the physical contact (somewhat) between human and stock critter I think helps that process. They claim the machines are more humane, maybe, they certainly eliminate some jobs, but create others. I'd have to see one working, I never have, so I really can't tell if it's as rosy as they make it out for the birds.
Gosh, it's great to know that this research might lead to exciting breakthroughs in the treatment of baldness. Certainly that possibility dwarfs the implications that humans might one day be able to grow a new set of teeth.
The priorities of mainstream media! Too bad they couldn't work Martha Stewart into the story somehow.
"Being held upside down freaks out the birds," says Michael P. Lacy of the University of Georgia's poultry-science department.
University of Georgia has a Poultry Science department? That's about the most ridiculous thing I've heard in at least one week. Wow. Maybe I'm in the wrong biz.
"natural beef flavoring." Some sort of extract.
All your coop are belong to us!
...and take the catcher off it.
NOW WE'RE TALKING VISUALS
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
Here are some choice cuts from the article (some parts modified for funniness):
...
...
/. has seen in a long while - thank God for chicken Venus flytraps! This stuff is comedic gold!
n /hra.p hp3
"You can't herd chickens."
The birds flap, scratch and befoul their captors. Most [manual chicken scratchers] can tolerate only a few months of that before flying the coop.
Now after years of attempts that ended in failure, including one ill-fated chicken vacuum, a robotic chickenator, and a chicken spring, manufacturers have finally produced machines capable of catching and caging chickens.
Looking like a combination airport baggage carousel, tank, and mound of feathers
The nine-ton, 42-foot-long contraption crept closer, slowly sweeping a low metal ramp back and forth through the flock like a giant scythe.
Whoosh! Each chicken was whisked up the belt into a small compartment, where a burst of air pushed it into a metal chute. Within seconds, the bird came to rest, blinking, still on its feet inside a wire cage.
"We support using machines that reduce the panic, fear, horror, and downright indignation of the chickens," says Karen Davis.
Human catchers are expected to snag as many as 1,000 birds an hour. As the men tire during eight-hour shifts, they accidentally slam birds against the cages, breaking wings and legs. Ouch!
Early devices included the chicken vacuum, which sucked up birds and shot them through tubes to waiting trucks. But the birds tended to plug up the tubes and turn somersaults as they traveled inside the contraption.
At Silsoe, Mr. Berry tried everything to force the birds to move under their own power. He flashed strobe lights in their eyes, hoping to startle them into action. He tried goosing them along with tiny jets of air. Nothing worked. Obviously he didn't try putting a road between the slaughterhouse and the pen, 'cause, then, y'know, the chickens would've crossed it
His eureka moment came after realizing that soft rubber fingers could be used to gently close around each bird, ushering it onto a conveyer belt -- a sort of Venus' flytrap for chickens.
This is definitely the best article
Oh, by the way, my friend from highschool made a game called Chickenator 2000. Here's a URL:
http://gamestation.gamesweb.sk/games/chicke
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Incidentally, I happen to be a farmer and I don't use pesticides.
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."
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.
One of these would rock in Zelda. :)
I'm reading at score 4, and I just followed the link from the previous story in my list to the Snopes article about chicken cannons. I still had chicken cannons on the mind when I read your post:
If they could ramp this up⦠â¦to toddler size, this could revolutionize the daycare industry.
It took me a few seconds of horror before I remembered the original article topic.
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.
It's an article on how understanding how a gene that once caused birds to have teeth could help fight baldness!?
Baldness Specialist: Here you go sir.
Bald Guy: What's that.
Baldness Specialist: No big deal. It's just a GM retro virus.
Bald Guy: Retrovirus?
Baldness Specialist: Yea. It contains a gene that once caused birds to grow teeth.
Bald Buy: Birds that grow teeth?
Baldness Specialist: Don't worry sir they did 5 years of bird teeth replacement trials before working on hair growth.
Bald Guy: Bird teeth replacement trials?
Baldness Specialist: Please sir, just be still.
Bald Guy: When hens have teeth! Doh!
I showed the picture to my step-son and he thought it was something for the extra heavy-weight division in Battle Bots. PH2000 = Pummel House 2000, right? ;-)
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
âoePeta should be advocating the fact that animals are sentient beings, not a renewable resource. And for those pathetic scientists who even created such a device should deserve death at the least, using their own stupid machines.â
Firstly, your car analogy is flawed. A car is a device which is created to transport, not to destroy. It could be used to destroy if used carelessly, but thatâ(TM)s not what itâ(TM)s created for. On the other hand, and device designed to destroy is created specifically to destroy, so your analogy is moot. Now, if a hydrogen bomb goes off in a large city, would you blame the user or the person who solely used his entire life to create and perfect such a weapon? Most people would probably blame both.
âoeWhere did you use the "=" sign there? You said scientists who create a technology should be put to death "at the least" (I'm wondering what your "most" would be...). You did not say the users of the machines should be put to death, you said the creators. That's like suing Ford for a drunk driver killing your relative. (Pssst... it's not equal.)â
Actually, I was answering a question from your previous thread that readâ¦
âoeBut it's something completely different when you try to value the life of one organism over another.â
I never did try to value the life of one organism over another, in fact, Iâ(TM)ve been advocating for the whole time that animals deserve the same respect and treatment as humans, i.e. equality, so I donâ(TM)t know where youâ(TM)re getting your point from.
âoeBut carrots, potatoes and beets cannot regenerate; you kill them by harvesting them.â
Actually, they can. If you take the top part of a carrot or beet (part with the green leaves) and put it back in soil, it DOES regenerate and I even do it myself (why wonâ(TM)t you try it and see for yourself?â. A similar thing is possible with potatoes, although it takes longer and to tell you the truth, I donâ(TM)t do that with them. You have to soak the green stuff that appears after two to three weeks or so (could take longer). This can also be done with pineapples (top part), sugar cane, cucumber and many other vegetables.
"Some single cell organisms are known to react and withdraw (run!) from heat. Is this not a single-cell pain reaction without a complex human-like nervous system? How can a single cell make this determination without having a 'brain'?"
Interestingly, the same web site says the following:
âoeWhat about the 'gifts' thing? Here is where plants are much nicer to us than we are to them. They give us FRUIT! Fruits are the gifts from plants to animals. It's much better than what we give them! But there is a catch - a payback is required! The implied contract is that we help them distribute their seeds, which in turn benefits both animals and plants - the plant babies grow up to make more fruit.â
I certainly do eat my fruits (plenty) but I admit I donâ(TM)t redistribute the seeds. Thank you for enlightening me, I really appreciate it. Also, we are, after all, only human. We are not God or anything even close. Now, am I against eating meat? No. Am I against the way we cultivate meat? Yes. If a person has to hunt and kill his prey and then eat his prey, which is perfectly acceptable. It is an instinctive practice that all carnivores do. Also, back in the days, animals used to be respected and thanked when they gave their lives for whoever ended up eating them. How many people do you know that do that today? People simply accept meat and take it for granted, without even caring about the animal itself or what its sacrifice.
âoe26: And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creepi
it is morally wrong to take the life of one being only to benefit yourself. This is a tough one. Millions or Billions of plants are killed, farmed in the name of humanity. Think of the bales of wheat during harvest season. Theyre all lives lost. Oh yeah its OK for you to take vegetables because they dont feel pain and arent really alive right? Some people say the same of fish. Other vegetarians even avoid eggs and milk. So where do you draw the line and on what basis? Its hard to believe but we're part of the food chain and taking care of ourselves comes before caring for the environment and other live creatures. why am I even arguing with you?
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Thank you brother, I feel glad that there is someone amongst myself. After having to try to face many people by myself, at last, there is another voice. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
I must admit that I don't always take the best approaches to try to advocate vaganism/vegetarianism, but I'm trying and willing to learn. Thank you and God bless.
"It's a snap to coax barnyard animals like pigs and cattle..."
:)
Anyone else read that the way I did?
At least it beats the "science" depicted in the Mad Science Awards.
Propaganda? It's in the news. Do you think you have better scientific merit or expertise that could prove otherwise? I don't know where you're from, but I don't think I want to know.
...until they figure out how to de-evolve a species? I think it would be pretty cool if they could figure out how to turn on all the dormant genes in a species no longer being used.
Project Steve
Reading the article about how arrogant humans can allow themselves to treat animals, confirms my choice of becoming strictly lakto-ovo vegetarian two years ago.
/. makes me thoroughly sick in my stomach and it amazes me how ignorant people are here regarding respect for life.
Reading the so-called "Funny" posts and comments here on
Just because we can, doesn't always mean we should.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Wonder why all flu's start out in China? Because they breed pigs and ducks close together and in close proximity to humans. It turns out this ancient custom is in fact the oldest known instance of biological engineering to create WMD. Are we up to hundreds of millions dead from flu pandemics yet?
Anyone else read that as "human harvesting machine"?
Money for nothing, pix for free
Can't say I agree with everything you've said, but I'll give you another reason to not eat meat: I've been to several environmental chemistry seminars in the past year that have mentioned studies showing 10-20% of air pollution in several major cities (e.g. Los Angeles) comes from fast food restaurants (i.e. they've observed high concentrations of organic molecules seen as byproducts of grilling meat but not connected to other processes, such as fuel combustion). Don't have any references for you, but if you have access to SciFinder they shouldn't be too difficult to find.
You probably shouldn't use this statistic if you like to grill mushrooms or veggies, though, because that will create some pollution as well.
Personally, I eat a variety of food (inlcuding meat) and find this helps me stay healthy and happy.
"Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist." -Indiana Jones
Okay, let me get this straight: you believe that humans, who are all physiologically set up for omnivorous behavior, have no right to slaughter animals (I'm assuming you missed the day in freshman bio where they went over the whole "food chain" bit). I can understand, while vehemently disagreeing with, your position. But you have the nerve to say that the animal "welfare" groups are "namby-pamby?"
The mind boggles.
They that would sacrifice their
Ok, so the subject is a bit misleading...thesen't aren't all killing tools but they're pretty crazy. It's worth a karma troll anyway. :)
Spinal Cord Remover
De-Horner
Bung Ring Expander (!!!!)
The Stun Box
Bung Droppers (Removes 1200 assholes an hour, no shit.)
Head Cutter
The Lung Gun (i don't want to know)
"Electrical Stimulation" (somehow, i think it does more than stimulate them...)
Your friend is a real pig fucker!
:P
Hey hey, don't look at me, I learned it from the cartoons
hmm... actually do you really mean: Chickens or ... Chick's :-)
Interesting... so far I've heard the "undefrosted chicken error" story as UK scientists lending machine to dumb Americans, Americans lending machine to dumb French, Americans lending machine to dumb British ...hmm... truly in folklore territory methinks! Anybody actually got a credible reference they can provide? or is it alas just another cool urban myth to laugh at the people we currently think are stooopid?
Feed them iron pellets over a period of time, so they have gizzards full of iron. Then at harvest time, just pass a giant electromagnet over the flock, and carry them off to the cage.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Whats that game where you fire chickens at things. Its a bit old, I can't remember what it is. Maybe Earth Worm Jim.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
Ok, I lied, there is text.
Go here to create your own Slashdot dis
LOL LOL !!
I sure want to hear from you when they outsource your job to india in the name of capitalism
maybe your wife can get a better outsourced husband also...
come on I'm waiting for the -1 it is only karma
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
You getcha' ammo for nothin', and your chickens for free...
www.airfarce.ca ...for those of us in the know, this isn't offtopic, it's become a Canadian institution!
It's only been a few short years since I graduated from high school and hung up my shit-soaked boots. I remember our crew of catchers as being a tough bunch of bastards who knew what we were about. So, from this perspective, I know what the article is trying to say.
New technology will be introduced for the express purpose of harvesting a barn of chickens faster while damaging the (poultry) product to a minimal degree. The reality is that consideration of a chicken's feelings is at the bottom of the list of grower's priorities. If humane treatment were a concern, the chickens would probably spend their lives laying eggs in a coup and die of old age rather than ending up on the packing floor, and we wouldn't eat chicken any more than we'd eat other people.
For illustration, in large egg barns, old hens are now being harvested by large vacuum cleaners (called macerators). These machines suck the hens out of their cramped cages through sets of whirling blades, which chop them up into little pieces. The result is packed in transport trucks and shipped to a central plant, where the chicken bits are deboned mechanically and then manufactured into such diverse products as chicken nuggets, chicken patties, chicken noodle soup, and pet food. This technological 'innovation' is clearly more brutal than a properly run, labor intensive operation. However, in this case, the chickens are simply too old for the grower to be troubled with the expense and time of using gentle to harvest them.
I think I should be crystal clear on this issue; killing animals for food is not humane. We choose to relegate animals (and plants, too) to a lesser status when we kill them for food - usually in a horrible fashion. I don't claim it's right or wrong to kill animals for food, just not humane.
-G
Note to PETA: if you guys knew anything, you'd know that chickens calm down in dim light. Conversely, they get aggrevated and crowd when the lights are on. Operating in dim light, chickens remain astonishingly calm when caught.
Another note to PETA: a chicken's life is almost perpetual fear anyway. It's a healthy reaction to being used for food.
Basically, I can't see this replacing cheap student labour. Just my two cents. did u read the article? it already is....
Are drugs the answer then? Should we just put all our livestock and laboratory animals on Prozac? Dr. Mench feels that while "mood altering" drugs are an important tool in helping animals to cope or preventing stress or injury we should view them as a band-aid until we design management practices that improve welfare.
Prozac
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Anyone else thinking of the combination sheep vacuum/shearer from Wallace & Gromit? In goes a chicken, out comes a chicken wandering around with its appendages sticking out of a down pillow...
I thought I was reading a one of those Area Man ... articles on The Onion when I read this paragraph:
"Early devices included the chicken vacuum, which sucked up birds and shot them through tubes to waiting trucks. But the birds tended to plug up the tubes and turn somersaults as they traveled inside the contraption. "We had too many die on us," recalls Buddy Burruss, vice president of operations at Tip Top Poultry Inc. of Marietta, Ga., which tested and quickly abandoned the pneumatic approach two decades ago."
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
A plus is the picture. In the SE section is the catcher. At first glance it looked like a huge chickens foot is sticking out of conveyer side.
Another goodie is the PETA folks.
Oh man. There goes my idea for a âoechicken horrifierâ. âoeThe chicken will put the lotion in the basket or the chicken will get the hose.â We'll see whose in control here.
A sanctuary for fallen chickens? Dude, thatâ(TM)s like a waste of time and space. Plus they are probably all messed up from falling 10 feet from a speeding rig.Whoâ(TM)s footing the vet bills?
Also, are there like a group of people who follow these trucks around all day hoping some hapless chicken will take a tumble and do they have to fight hillbillies and vagrants for them?
Oh wait, it gets better :
Damn. You KNOW most of these first engineers were doing this for fun. Hell, most probably worked for free. I mean cummon, freakinâ(TM) live chicken cannons?!? Canâ(TM)t you just see these dudes on a Friday? âoeLetâ(TM)s see how far we can shoot a chickenâ : probably some of the most sweetest words ever uttered by man. But then some chicken molester came along and spoiled the fun with his rubber fingers. $200k/yr ?! since the 80â(TM)s?! Thatâ(TM)s like $4 million minus the $10 strobe light from Radio Shack!! ( you know he already had the rubber fingers ). Where was I on career day when this option came up? I missed this job posted on monster.com. I'd be like gone for 19 years and 11 months, then show up with a high pressure hose. Check please.Actually, if the theory of the 100th monkey is correct, only 100 chickens need to somehow figure out how to avoid being caught, before the all chicken becomes immune to this method.
e sdonahu e/id404.html
Theory found here:
http://perdurabo10.tripod.com/themindofjam
I used to work as a courier, and made a couple of deliveries to a chicken plant (they needed parts for some machine occasionally). I have to tell you that that processing plant stank worse than anything I've ever had the misfortune to be around. Worse, in fact, than a hog farm after a rain. I don't know how the regular employees could stand it. I'm glad I only went there 2 or 3 times.
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
I'm no expert, but I've read that Kuru and CJD are different prion-borne diseases.
You could've hired me.
What is hell to you may be heaven to an animal. Quit projecting your human prejudices onto non-human creatures.
That advice goes to all animal "rights" people.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
"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"
I first read this as, design a HUMAN harvesting machine. Oooohhh, yuk, Soylent Green anyone? Nasty.
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.
That might explain why your economies are a joke, compared to the US.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Otherwise known as the Cock Sucker
I am a chicken farmer (or "Poultry Producer", if you prefer) on the eastren shore. I grow for perdue.
We usually machine-catch the chickens, but there are some points to be made about this article:
-The reason we like machines better: Cheaper, faster, and machines don't wrap their crap up in paper and leave it around. (Hand catchers do)
-We don't work in the dark. We use red or blue lights.
-A CHICKEN VACCUM?? I have never heard of this. Personally, I think this is a fabrication: how do you keep from sucking up manure (or "litter", as its usually called) with the chicken.
-The machines used aren't these huge Beasts. We use converted John Deers that have revolving rubber-finger-drums. The chickens are kept in a small bay in the back, then dumped into a "packing machine", which puts the chickens into cages for transportation. There are usually 2 catching machines a house, and 1 packer.
Oh, and while we're talking about chickens-PETA would have you believe we make the chickens sit on the ground, in their own crap. We do! And, contrary to urban myths, modern chickens don't really like straw. And they don't like to roost. They like to wallow in their crap.
There, I've finished with my rant/correction. I will probably get flamed by people who accuse me of all sorts of things, but WTH, I've said my piece.
"The most looniest, zaniest, spontaneous, sporadic Impulsive thinker, compulsive drinker, addict"
hehehehe that comment of mine sure has garnered some interest. I don't think there's an URL anyplace, but I can describe her as I remember her. About 5' 8" , 130 lbs or so, curvy as ya need, face very similar to a young version angelica houston (near as I can get with a public figure person), but with that amazing pretty hair, down to her butt, very straight and fine. Now you'll just have to fantasize.
She was interesting ethnicicity background, her mom was a direct immigrant, from northern italy, and was a blonde, her dad was a second generation finnish immigrant, also a blond. I learned to make finnish pancakes from her, pure cholesterol tasty goodness, and some italian stuff I don't remember the names of anymore. It wasn't like the italian stuff you would be most familiar with, it was closer to german styled food, probably from that tyrolean I guess it is influence of her mom, that style of cooking. Good eats, and good treats!
Except you're phoneticizing it wrong. It's Koh-bay, as in, not like the basketball player's name.
It comes from cows raised in the city of Kobe.
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
First of all, I don't sell my food, dickhead. Second, more than half of the water used in the US is wasted just for raising cattle on farms.
You're comments are full of so much doggerel that even you're parents wouldn't be impressed. Load up google, search some articles, read them and then talk.
Get off your high horse, honestly.
I am sure you milk your own cows and get your own eggs from your own hens.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Being imprisoned with noise, smell and dirt being heaven to animals?
You know, if you really believe that, I feel very sorry for you. Animals love to live free. Just look at any cat that has tasted the life outside, they always try to escape outside.
Do not even try to justify it, because that's doomed from the very beginning.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/