My name is Amelia and I’m one of the millions of victims of the animal agriculture industry. My story is a sad one, but one that’s important to tell.
When you think of chicks being born, I’m sure you imagine us hatching from eggs and being lovingly cared for by our mothers.
I wish this was how my life began, but like millions of other chicks, our short lives start in a large scale hatchery, and we are soon shipped off to large farms where we live in appalling conditions for a few months until we have grown abnormally large and are sent to slaughter.
In my case, I was sent to Jannat Farm, a facility contracted by Tyson Foods, the largest chicken producer in the U.S. There, I was shown little kindness and I suffered terribly. I was kept in a crowded shed with wet and dirty floors. My feet hurt and I was always cold. I longed for someone to take care of me, but all I experienced was neglect and cruelty.
Top left: A small, bloody chick with an exposed skull and a severely damaged eye clings to life
Top right: A small chick with a severed wing
Bottom left: A live chicken remains by the side of a dead chicken on the muddy ground
Bottom right: Two chicks struggling to survive the slow torture of life on a chicken farm
You can make a difference for chickens like me - and fight back against mega-corporations like Tyson-by not eating us. For alternatives to eating chickens, visit TryVeg.com.
When I arrived at Jannat Farm, I was newly hatched and very small. In the chicken house where I was kept, the waterlines were too high and I couldn’t reach them to drink. I would jump up and down in a desperate attempt to reach water. For the first few weeks, I was always thirsty, and would only occasionally be able to drink when a nice man took pity on me and lifted me up to the water.
I was often hungry. Our food ran out sometimes. Once, we were without food for more than two days.
While it was awful being thirsty, hungry, and cold, the worst thing was seeing my friends suffer. A lot of them had deformities and wounds. One of the other birds in my house had an exposed skull and a badly injured eye. They looked like they were in so much pain and it was hard to believe they were still alive. As I got older, it became hard to walk because I grew too quickly.
Some of my fellow birds were left to suffer for days at a time. Even when a worker noticed them, he often left them on the ground to suffer. One time, he walked past three or four dying birds, pointed and laughed. On occasion, a worker would pick up other birds and kill them violently. I hoped this would never happen to me.
After a few months living at this horrible place, some more people came in and started being cruel to us. They picked us up and threw us roughly into crates. I even saw a few of my friends being kicked. I didn’t know where we were going, but I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be a good place.
My story isn’t unique in any way. Thousands of chickens with faces and names I’ll never know suffered alongside me. I kept asking myself the question “what did I do to deserve this?”. What did any of us do to be treated so badly?
Thank you for reading my story. I hope that everyone who reads this will do all they can to help chickens and other animals like me. The first thing people can do is stop eating animals. We feel pain and we suffer.
With gratitude,
Amelia
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