US chicken companies pioneered restricting sleep to keep birds eating around the clock.

A new study (Li et al., 2026) recommends giving chickens just 2 hours of darkness nightly to maximize the time they spend eating. The study and photo are Chinese.

We know chickens have far better hapiness with 7–8 hours of darkness to sleep.

But they eat more and grow faster when they are sleep deprived.

  • osanna@lemmy.vg
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    8 days ago

    cows in dairy, and chickens in egg are abused horribly as well. Go vegan.

    edit: Egg layers are often in cages, with 3-4 other birds. In a tiny cage. They have no solid ground to stand on, just bars. So their feet are often horribly deformed. When eggs are hatched, if they’re male, they’re killed at less than a few minutes old, because they are “useless” and will never lay eggs. the male chicks will be ground up alive in something called a macerator (think a blender). if they’re born female, they’ll often end up in the same cages as their mothers. They get their beaks chopped off because they will attack each other from all the suffering. Egg layers in the wild will lay 10-12 eggs a year. They’ve been selectively bred so much that they now lay 1-2 a DAY. That’s 300-400 a year! Imagine ovulating every fucking day, often multiple times a day. It’s torture on them. Egg layers can live for 5-10 years naturally, but because laying 300-400 eggs a year is so horrible on their bodies, they collapse and are then slaughtered (sometimes they just dump them in a hole, and cover it up. While they’re alive). Even in “free range”, there are so many chickens in the shed that their pecking order is severely fucked up. Chickens would normally live in a community of a few birds. In these sheds, they’re crammed in by the thousands. The ammonia from all the urea is so strong it burns their eyes and throat etc. It’s truly truly horrible. Activists have to go in to these sheds with breathing masks because the ammonia is so strong. Chickens are bred and fed so fast to have as much meat as possible as quickly as possible that a lot of chickens will break their legs and collapse or have heart attacks (or both). These chickens will then just lay on the ground and starve to death because they are unable to walk to food.

    Also, like all mammals, cows need to be pregnant to give milk. They do not just naturally produce milk all year round (well, dairy cows do, because they’re constantly impregnated, so they give milk nearly all their lives). When the mama cow gives birth, her child will either be killed at a few hours old (if male), or be put into slavery like her mother if she’s a girl. They can live for upwards of 20 years when given the chance, but dairy cows will be slaughtered for low quality meat such as sausages and burgers at just 3-4 years old. Imagine being pregnant almost all your life. Shit is terribly hard on their bodies. When cows cannot do it anymore, they just collapse. These cows are called “downers”. They are dragged out by a truck/forklift by their legs. Then slaughtered.

    Imagine your life being so worthless that you’re mistreated for all your life, only to then become a fucking burger or nugget. Holy shit.

    It’s suffering all the way down.

    #GoVegan

    • nova@lemmy.vg
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      8 days ago

      Mother cows will cry out for their babies who were taken from them, never to see them again. All because a bunch of assholes refuse to drink oat milk. Fucking awful.

      • osanna@lemmy.vg
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        8 days ago

        Yup. The pine for weeks or even months sometimes for their children. They can hear them. They may even be able to see them, but they can’t get to them, because milk. Mammals are incredibly maternal. Imagine having baby after baby being taken from you minutes after birth, never to see them again. Again, suffering all the way down.

        There is a mother cow on a sanctuary here in australia (clarabelle). She was rescued from the dairy industry when she was pregnant. She gave birth to her son (valentine, because he was born on valentine’s day). When he was a youngin, Clarabelle would hide him from the workers at the sanctuary, probably because she was afraid he’d be taken from her. She did this for months. Every time the workers would find Valentine, she’d move him. It was heartbreaking.

        FYI, the farm is called Edgar’s Mission.

        Remind me again how animals don’t have feelings and emotions, and are just unthinking automatons?