The results of these very unnatural conditions are feather-pecking and cannibalism. In egg factories, newborn male chicks, since they are not useful to the egg industry, are tossed into plastic garbage bags, where they slowly suffocate by being buried under the bodies of other live chicks thrown in on top of them. When hens reach egg-laying age, they are crammed four to a wire cage the size of a record album cover. Crowding is so bad that the chickens cannot even stretch their wings. Sometimes cages sit on top of one another in tier fashion, with chicken excrement failing through the bottom of the cage onto the chickens in the cages below.
Beef cattle begin life in the pasture, but are then sold to factory farmers.
There they are crowded into fenced feedlots or confined to warehouses with automated feed and waste removal systems. Exercise is minimized because it burns calories. Bulls are castrated to produce a more fatty, hence more expensive grade of meat. Cattle are also subjected to dehorning, a painful process to avoid injuries to cattle in the very overcrowded feedlots. To give as much milk as possible, dairy cows are mechanically impregnated every year.