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.
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'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.
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?
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!
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!
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.
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
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.
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...
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.
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
For those interested, here's a link to the product page, with a handy dandy video of it in action.
>> New worst job: chicken masturbator
What do they do, choke them to death?
Not the kind that you buy in the store. Laying hens are (obviously) female, but broilers (the kind you get cut up in the supermarket) are "straight run", meaning unsexed, about 50/50 sex ratio. They are killed at 8 weeks of age, before any significant hormonal effects take over.