In the slaughterhouse, the chickens are secured upside-down by their feet on a moving rail. They are largely immobilized by an electrified bath, then their throats are slit by a mechanical blade, and finally they are submerged in a scalding tank, sometimes still conscious while boiled. Turkeys are raised and slaughtered similarly, though in addition to debeaking they often undergo unanesthetized toe clipping to reduce any damage due to fighting under the stressful environment. The plight of birds associated with egg laying begins at the hatchery. Since males cannot lay eggs, half of all newborn chicks are soon eliminated by suffocation, grinding alive, or by simply discarding them in trash cans.
Females quickly grow to become egg layers.
For virtually their entire lives, egg-laying hens are confined to small wire cages stacked in layers. Usually four or five debeaked hens are fit so tightly per cage that the birds eventually lose the majority of their feathers due to unavoidable rubbing against the cage wires. Egg-layers suffer even greater stresses than their broiler cousins because they are not given room to move about or even stretch their wings. After roughly a year, hens reach the end of their initial egg laying cycle, at which time they are often slaughtered for low-grade meat.