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The commercial production of broiler chickens for meat consumption is a highly industrialized process. There are two major sectors: (1) rearing birds intended for consumption and (2) rearing parent stock for breeding the meat birds.
Broiler breeder farms raise parent stock which produce fertilized eggs. A broiler hatching egg is never sold at stores and is not meant for human consumption. [9] The males and females are separate genetic lines or breeds, so that each line can be selected for optimal traits for productivity in either females or males, rather than a single line in which a compromise is reached between female ...
In a "higher welfare" system, chickens are kept indoors but with more space (around 14 to 16 birds per square metre). [39] They have a richer environment for example with natural light or straw bales that encourage foraging and perching. The chickens grow more slowly and live for up to two weeks longer than intensively farmed birds.
Different segments of the poultry industry sex chickens for various reasons. In farms that produce eggs, males are unwanted; for meat production, separate male and female lines for breeding are maintained to produce the hybrid birds that are sold for the table, and chicks of the wrong sex in either line are unwanted.
Following the Treaty of Wanghia between the US and China in 1844, oriental poultry breeds were imported to New England, and Rhode Island became the nation's first major poultry center. [3] Cross-breeding between English and Asian birds created new breeds still common today, like the Barred Plymouth Rock.
In 1950, chickens took roughly 16 weeks to reach the ideal weight for sale. Now, chickens are ready to be processed in half that time , thanks to selective breeding and specialized diets.
However, the bird's parents, often called "broiler-breeders", must live to maturity and beyond so they can be used for breeding. As a consequence, they have additional welfare concerns. Meat broilers have been artificially selected for an extremely high feeding motivation, but are not usually feed-restricted, as this would delay the time taken ...
Selective breeding has been responsible for large increases in productivity. For example, in 2007, a typical broiler chicken at eight weeks old was 4.8 times as heavy as a bird of similar age in 1957, [36] while in the thirty years to 2007, the average milk yield of a dairy cow in the United States nearly doubled. [36]