Sometimes the bags full of living chicks are crushed by manual or automatic mallets, to be used as fertilizer or mink food. Welcome to planet Earth, baby birds. Female chicks are debeaked with a searing wire that sometimes also takes part of their tiny tongues or faces. They are so jam-packed, they can't even stretch a wing or preen themselves. Excrement from cages stacked above spatters hens below.
Raw sores replace feathers.
Feet made to walk on ground, not balance on slanted wire, become deformed. Legs become crippled, wings atrophy, bones made brittle snap. The weak die. Some European countries have outlawed the battery cage and enacted humane laws to protect hens. No such measure is forthcoming in the United States, so great is the poultry magnates' power.