Chicken companies prevent chicken from sleeping to keep them eating around the clock
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 when they are sleep restricted.
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And chick fil a wants to take the moral high ground with their cow saying eat more chicken
Fuck that an' all. But how do we know "chickens have far better happiness with 7-8 hours of darkness to sleep"? How does one measure the happiness of a chicken?
Signs of stress, and behaviors that indicate a normative state.
Chickens, when calm and with their flock, make all kinds of sounds and exhibit behaviors like "cuddling", and even the rare mutual preening. While it's impossible to point to anything like that and be 100% certain you've identified the internal emotional state of an animal, it's one of those duck things, only chickens. If it looks like a happy chicken, and trills like a happy chicken, might as well say it's a happy chicken.
If chickens don't get good rest, you'll notice all the usual bird stress behaviors appearing. Feather plucking, grumpiness, pecking, angry zipper noises, etc.
So, again, it's foolhardy to apply human states of mind to anything that can't speak our language. But some things can be observed and extrapolated to at least be similar.
Side note: the sound a happy chicken makes when cuddling you will either melt your heart, or prove you're an emotionless wreck. I have wept at that sound
Flip the question:
How do we measure a chickens suffering?
That question has an intuitive answer if you're honest enough.
The vegans are right.
FYI caged hens are no longer common in large parts of the western world and even in the worst countries, like the US, the percentage of caged hens have dropped under 50%. For meat chickens it's even better with practically zero in cages.
Talking about lightning the EU mandates 6 hours of darkness. Don't know the US rules. I'm assuming it's much worse there as it usually is.
Laws vary by state but iirc, California banned caging entirely, including imports. That said, cage free doesn't mean quality of life.
I notice a huge difference with the more expensive eggs cause real free roaming hens eat lots of bugs and produce better eggs with deep orange yolks. Though, naturally scammers ruin that cause some orange hued eggs are dyed so buyer beware.
Even for meat chickens not in cages, they're bred to be so big and grow so fast they can hardly walk and many just die of heart attacks as they get too big.
That doesn't mean they get sunshine, fresh air, green grass.
Please don’t fall into the ‘cage free is fine’ delusion, because putting so many chickens in a square meter that none of them have personal space is probably about as miserable for them as being in a cage. If anything it can be worse, since chickens can and will attack and eat injured chickens.
Becoming a radicalized vegetarian over here
We're all going to become vegetarian because meat is a luxury.
if you want to make an impact on the suffering of animals, veganism is it. vegetarians still support the dairy and egg industries, which may be the most cruel.
I see, I guess I need to look more into it. Every time I try I rage quit because it's so infuriating.
You don't need to know about the meat industry horrors or the health impacts of meat or benefits of less meat. Just make small changes like finding dairy alternatives you like, or a meatless recipe you like. From there you can continue to make as few or many additional changes as you like.
I really like this approach it's less overwhelming.
Start with something. Being vegan is still hard to do in many places. Being vegetarian is thankfully much better than it was 30 years ago.
Back in the day I once traveled the entirety of a certain midwestern state where my food options were essentially coffee and salad. I mean, not really, but also kinda. It’s better now.
you can do it!!
I hope so, thank you
Yeah, if hell exists these people are going there, fuck, how can you be so disgusting.
Oh man, the other day I watched that Netflix documentary "Big Chicken" about the fried chicken industry 🤢