- Joined
- Nov 11, 2014
Now that's just an insult to Venusaur.
Animal Breeding Horror Show - Featuring trendy bulldogs, exotic bullies and the dog cum cartel
- Thread starter Spennychu
- Start date
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kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2023
I think we can all agree that if your dog needs a C-section to deliver, you shouldn't breed it
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2021
My grandmother had a female cat who pumped out litter after litter on her and my grandfather's farm circa mid 1970s when I was a kid. Once my granddad showed us conjoined kitten triplets, just prior to his drowning them. They were joined at the hips and looked to be full term. My kid brain accepted the kittens as just one of those things that happened on the farm.
I suppose drowning the kittens was the most humane option at the time. I don't even know how the mother cat birthed them, must have been horrific.
- Joined
- May 25, 2013
Or at least stop breeding to that level of deformity and try to bring the breed back to historical, less deformed standards.
I know there's a crazy difference between bulldogs 100 years ago vs. today.
I would think snapping the necks quickly (like people do to kill chickens or rabbits raised for food) would be more humane than drowning. Though the poor things would've probably died on their own regardless.
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2021
There’s been some talk of livestock breeding in this thread, but I haven’t seen anything about meat poultry so here we go. I once took a class in the subject and was shocked by how extreme the breeding of these birds can get. The professor, a chicken breeding expert, would casually say completely crazy shit like “some turkeys completely lose the ability to stand because their bones cannot hold their weight”. The main difference between this and the pet breeding which this thread mostly discusses is that these miserable creatures serve a practical purpose, which makes it harder to fully condemn. Broilers (meat chickens, different from layer hens because it’s impossible to breed a bird that will be a good egg layer but also be SMASHED and SLAMMED enough for the meat industry) are the most efficient way to produce meat, but that comes at the cost of their quality of life. Also these breeders aren’t individuals who just wanted to breed some birds, most of the world’s broilers are bred by only 3 massive companies (Cobb-Vantress, Aviagen, and Hubbard).
Disclaimer: If you have a hard time with this stuff and intend to keep eating chicken, you might want to skip this post. I don’t want you to feel bad every time you eat chicken nuggets or whatever. Pasture-raised is less cruel and healthier to eat so I buy that when I can, but it’s obviously a lot more expensive and less available.
Disclaimer: If you have a hard time with this stuff and intend to keep eating chicken, you might want to skip this post. I don’t want you to feel bad every time you eat chicken nuggets or whatever. Pasture-raised is less cruel and healthier to eat so I buy that when I can, but it’s obviously a lot more expensive and less available.
The goals of broiler farmers and breeders are:
-high feed efficiency (the goal is to have chickens that need as little food as possible to reach market weight)
-rapid growth
-high meat yield
-healthy enough animals that they can survive until they’re big enough for slaughter without being too sick to meet the meat safety standards
When organisms undergo selection (whether natural or artificial), there is always a tradeoff. Here are the things poultry breeders have sacrificed to achieve those goals:
-animal quality of life
-lifespan (they only need to live for a matter of weeks so there is no practical reason to even care if they’re healthy as adults)
-breeding ability (artificial insemination is often more convenient anyways)
-reproductive capacity/egg laying (egg layer chickens and broiler chickens are separate industries). The parents of broiler chickens are not bred to be broilers, they’re bred to be the parents of broilers. The broilers themselves are killed long before they’re old enough to start laying.
The National Poultry Council has a page showing how the averages of four major metrics of broiler performance (market age, market weight, feed efficiency, and mortality) have changed over the years:
https://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/about-the-industry/statistics/u-s-broiler-performance/
In 1925, before the massive commercial poultry industry that we know today existed, chickens reached market weight in 112 days, market weight was 2.5 lbs, it took 4.7 lbs of feed for a chicken to gain a pound of live weight, and about 18% of chickens died before reaching market age/weight. Chickens up to this point were domesticated but not really farmed, it was more common that a family would have some chickens roaming the yard or farm scavenging and producing eggs.
The poultry meat industry really got started in the 1940s when chickens became more of a focus for agricultural research. By 1950, the birds reached market weight in just 70 days. That market weight was still reasonable at about 3 lbs. Feed efficiency was about 3 lbs of feed to 1 lb of weight gain and mortality had lowered to 8% with better management.
Seventy years of intensive breeding later, broiler chickens in 2022 took an unbelievably low 47 days to reach market weight. Keep in mind that chickens aren’t able to lay eggs until they are about 18 weeks (126 days) old. The market weight is 6.56 lbs. SIX AND A HALF POUNDS. Feed efficiency is at 1.77 lbs of feed (mostly grain based) per pound live weight. I don’t know how that’s even possible. Mortality is at 5.3%, up from the all-time low of 3.7% in 2012. If these chickens roamed outdoors and fended for themselves like the chickens of 1925 did, they would be goners.
So what do these birds look like?
Aside from the terrible conditions these birds are being kept in (not the point of this post but definitely also contributes to the low quality of life modern broiler chickens have), you might think they look pretty normal. But this is how they compare to chickens of the past:
The height and chick size remaining pretty similar suggests that the skeleton and organs probably haven’t changed enough to keep up with the massive increase in weight.
Still, feathers hide a lot. Here’s a cross section of some carcasses from a breed which has not been selected for meat growth (ACRBC) and a common broiler breed (Ross) under the same conditions during a study in the early 2000s:
The breast region has become especially oversized because breast meat is the most valuable cut of chicken.
As you can imagine, these birds aren’t very happy. A 2020 study (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72198-x) examined chicken welfare in “four conditions representing commercial systems varying in breed and planned maximum stocking density: (1) Breed A, 30 kg/m2; (2) Breed B, 30 kg/m2; (3) Breed B, 34 kg/m2; (4) Breed C, 34 kg/m2. Breeds A and B were ‘slow-growing’ breeds (< 50 g/day), and Breed C was a widely used ‘fast-growing’ breed.”
Though the fast-growing chickens in condition 4 were stocked less densely, they still had much worse behavioral and health outcomes than the slow-growing breeds:
“Birds in Condition 4 experienced the poorest health (highest mortality and post-mortem inspection rejections, poorest walking ability, most hock burn and pododermatitis) and litter quality. These birds also displayed lower levels of behaviours indicative of positive welfare (enrichment bale occupation, qualitative ‘happy/active’ scores, play, ground-scratching) than birds in Conditions 1–3.”
Here are some interesting results of the study:
This is a graph showing health conditions that led to chickens being rejected by the processing plant after being slaughtered. As you can see, the fast-growing chickens had a lot more issues. A small enough percentage are sick enough to get rejected that it’s still more profitable to use these breeds. Here’s a website explaining what some of these problems mean: https://www.fwi.co.uk/livestock/pou...poultry-carcass-rejects-and-how-to-avoid-them. TLDR: these birds that got rejected must have been miserable because this is some painful-looking shit.
This chart shows how well the chickens walk. None of the condition 4 chickens were able to walk as easily as a normal chicken and overall they scored way worse, though they were all able to walk at least a bit.
Here is a chart showing how many of the hay bales set out for the chickens to have fun with (they like scratching and pecking at stuff) were being used. The slower-growing breeds were utilizing most of their bales (condition 3 were less densely stocked so they were probably using the bales less because they were running around or something), while in condition 4 the bales were completely ignored. These chickens not wanting to play with the bales shows a lack of motivation or ability to engage in natural behavior similar to when those awful inbred dogs are so fucked up that they don’t want to chase balls or go on walks. Moving around and doing normal chicken stuff is so difficult that they choose to continue sitting in their own shit and eating instead. This inactivity also caused the fast-growing chickens to have much higher rates of hock burn and Pododermatitis (ammonia burns/skin infections on the legs and/or feet from laying in soiled litter) than the slow-growing ones. These fast-growing birds are the industry standard.
It’s pretty much the same with turkeys, though because they’re bigger they often end up having an even harder time moving. The turkeys have almost completely stopped even trying to breed so practically all modern meat turkeys are produced through artificial insemination. Broad-Breasted White Turkeys, the most common breed for meat production, have a lifespan of 2-5 years (healthier breeds of turkey can live for like 10 years), though most of them will die at around 18 weeks old when they’re ready for slaughter. It’s probably more humane to kill them young than to let them grow into adults.
Broad-Breasted White Turkey:
Wild Turkey:
Like any animal bred to be very oversized, meat poultry suffer from bone, joint, heart and respiratory issues. At least they get put out of their misery quickly.
-high feed efficiency (the goal is to have chickens that need as little food as possible to reach market weight)
-rapid growth
-high meat yield
-healthy enough animals that they can survive until they’re big enough for slaughter without being too sick to meet the meat safety standards
When organisms undergo selection (whether natural or artificial), there is always a tradeoff. Here are the things poultry breeders have sacrificed to achieve those goals:
-animal quality of life
-lifespan (they only need to live for a matter of weeks so there is no practical reason to even care if they’re healthy as adults)
-breeding ability (artificial insemination is often more convenient anyways)
-reproductive capacity/egg laying (egg layer chickens and broiler chickens are separate industries). The parents of broiler chickens are not bred to be broilers, they’re bred to be the parents of broilers. The broilers themselves are killed long before they’re old enough to start laying.
The National Poultry Council has a page showing how the averages of four major metrics of broiler performance (market age, market weight, feed efficiency, and mortality) have changed over the years:
https://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/about-the-industry/statistics/u-s-broiler-performance/
In 1925, before the massive commercial poultry industry that we know today existed, chickens reached market weight in 112 days, market weight was 2.5 lbs, it took 4.7 lbs of feed for a chicken to gain a pound of live weight, and about 18% of chickens died before reaching market age/weight. Chickens up to this point were domesticated but not really farmed, it was more common that a family would have some chickens roaming the yard or farm scavenging and producing eggs.
The poultry meat industry really got started in the 1940s when chickens became more of a focus for agricultural research. By 1950, the birds reached market weight in just 70 days. That market weight was still reasonable at about 3 lbs. Feed efficiency was about 3 lbs of feed to 1 lb of weight gain and mortality had lowered to 8% with better management.
Seventy years of intensive breeding later, broiler chickens in 2022 took an unbelievably low 47 days to reach market weight. Keep in mind that chickens aren’t able to lay eggs until they are about 18 weeks (126 days) old. The market weight is 6.56 lbs. SIX AND A HALF POUNDS. Feed efficiency is at 1.77 lbs of feed (mostly grain based) per pound live weight. I don’t know how that’s even possible. Mortality is at 5.3%, up from the all-time low of 3.7% in 2012. If these chickens roamed outdoors and fended for themselves like the chickens of 1925 did, they would be goners.
So what do these birds look like?
Aside from the terrible conditions these birds are being kept in (not the point of this post but definitely also contributes to the low quality of life modern broiler chickens have), you might think they look pretty normal. But this is how they compare to chickens of the past:
The height and chick size remaining pretty similar suggests that the skeleton and organs probably haven’t changed enough to keep up with the massive increase in weight.
Still, feathers hide a lot. Here’s a cross section of some carcasses from a breed which has not been selected for meat growth (ACRBC) and a common broiler breed (Ross) under the same conditions during a study in the early 2000s:
The breast region has become especially oversized because breast meat is the most valuable cut of chicken.
As you can imagine, these birds aren’t very happy. A 2020 study (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72198-x) examined chicken welfare in “four conditions representing commercial systems varying in breed and planned maximum stocking density: (1) Breed A, 30 kg/m2; (2) Breed B, 30 kg/m2; (3) Breed B, 34 kg/m2; (4) Breed C, 34 kg/m2. Breeds A and B were ‘slow-growing’ breeds (< 50 g/day), and Breed C was a widely used ‘fast-growing’ breed.”
Though the fast-growing chickens in condition 4 were stocked less densely, they still had much worse behavioral and health outcomes than the slow-growing breeds:
“Birds in Condition 4 experienced the poorest health (highest mortality and post-mortem inspection rejections, poorest walking ability, most hock burn and pododermatitis) and litter quality. These birds also displayed lower levels of behaviours indicative of positive welfare (enrichment bale occupation, qualitative ‘happy/active’ scores, play, ground-scratching) than birds in Conditions 1–3.”
Here are some interesting results of the study:
This is a graph showing health conditions that led to chickens being rejected by the processing plant after being slaughtered. As you can see, the fast-growing chickens had a lot more issues. A small enough percentage are sick enough to get rejected that it’s still more profitable to use these breeds. Here’s a website explaining what some of these problems mean: https://www.fwi.co.uk/livestock/pou...poultry-carcass-rejects-and-how-to-avoid-them. TLDR: these birds that got rejected must have been miserable because this is some painful-looking shit.
This chart shows how well the chickens walk. None of the condition 4 chickens were able to walk as easily as a normal chicken and overall they scored way worse, though they were all able to walk at least a bit.
Here is a chart showing how many of the hay bales set out for the chickens to have fun with (they like scratching and pecking at stuff) were being used. The slower-growing breeds were utilizing most of their bales (condition 3 were less densely stocked so they were probably using the bales less because they were running around or something), while in condition 4 the bales were completely ignored. These chickens not wanting to play with the bales shows a lack of motivation or ability to engage in natural behavior similar to when those awful inbred dogs are so fucked up that they don’t want to chase balls or go on walks. Moving around and doing normal chicken stuff is so difficult that they choose to continue sitting in their own shit and eating instead. This inactivity also caused the fast-growing chickens to have much higher rates of hock burn and Pododermatitis (ammonia burns/skin infections on the legs and/or feet from laying in soiled litter) than the slow-growing ones. These fast-growing birds are the industry standard.
It’s pretty much the same with turkeys, though because they’re bigger they often end up having an even harder time moving. The turkeys have almost completely stopped even trying to breed so practically all modern meat turkeys are produced through artificial insemination. Broad-Breasted White Turkeys, the most common breed for meat production, have a lifespan of 2-5 years (healthier breeds of turkey can live for like 10 years), though most of them will die at around 18 weeks old when they’re ready for slaughter. It’s probably more humane to kill them young than to let them grow into adults.
Broad-Breasted White Turkey:
Wild Turkey:
Like any animal bred to be very oversized, meat poultry suffer from bone, joint, heart and respiratory issues. At least they get put out of their misery quickly.
- Joined
- May 25, 2013
I know the factory farm and meat industry as it is has a lot of problems not just with humane treatment of animals, but workers as well. It's become a monopoly and farmers end up getting paid very little, plus conditions at giant processing plants are dangerous and allow disease to spread rapidly.
It doesn't mean people should all stop eating meat, but it's an industry that needs lots of reformation. People raising their own chickens/etc when they can is also a good idea.
It doesn't mean people should all stop eating meat, but it's an industry that needs lots of reformation. People raising their own chickens/etc when they can is also a good idea.
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2021
This isn't the human breeding thread.
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2021
I agree that those are also issues and the meat industry needs reform (thankfully things do seem to be changing, at least where I live), but I think a lot of people overlook the breeding aspect of it. Obviously the broilers are miserable huddled together in a dimly lit barn, but they would still have a poor quality of life if you tried to raise them in a spacious backyard. In the study I was talking about, they briefly mentioned that they set up wires for the chickens to perch on and then never saw the fast-growing broilers get on them. If these birds aren’t perching even when the alternative is laying in bedding so unsanitary that they’re getting ammonia burns on their legs, then they’re probably not going to run around doing regular chicken stuff. I guess if you don’t feed them as much they won’t get so big but then they’ll probably be upset because they were bred to be as hungry as possible and so they’ll never be satisfied on a natural chicken diet. Kind of like the ultra-morbidly obese people who’ve stretched out their stomach and messed up their hormones so that they require massive quantities of food to feel full, except these chickens are born like that.
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- Joined
- May 25, 2013
Humanity is horrifying and I understand why God stays in heaven in fear of his creation (and their creations)
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2023
the entire rest of the forum would serve that purpose.
not sure if its entirely in the spirit of the thread, but i haven't seen the horrors used for medical science mentioned. they tend to have specific mutations that produce phenotypes that make them good as models for certain types of investigations. nude mice have highly suppressed immune systems. so you can study human cancers in them without their immune systems killing them as soon as they're grafted.
there are also some used for epilepsy study called WAG rats, which have absence seizures. there are loads of genetic animal models for clinical research.
at least, unlike the animals sold as pets, these serve a higher purpose rather than needlessly suffering for our entertainment. there are many sick people who don't have any other options until we get x-on-a-chip technologies much better- i.e. proper 3d structure, multiple cell types, vascularisation... may not be possible.
- Joined
- Sep 29, 2021
Why though? Every generation in the attempt to bring back historical standards is a generation of animals still suffering from the current deformities. Why not just let these breeds die out? Give every existing animal the best care and comfort and love that it deserves, and just stop breeding them all together.
- Joined
- May 25, 2013
Eh, these guys don't seem too bad. Though beyond that, bulldogs and pugs are extremely popular breeds the demand for unfortunately won't stop any time soon. So the least that can be done is to try and make those breeds less horribly unhealthy.
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
It's cruelty to breed animals with the deliberate intention of them being horribly deformed. We seriously need to stop breeding these horribly brachiocephalic dogs. It's cruel. Creating monstrous pain for innocent animals because human morons have some sick desire of viewing them as "cute" is disgusting.
Instrumentalizing animals to this extent is a repulsive practice and we need to quit doing it.
- Joined
- May 25, 2013
That's why all the serious attempts at creating healthier bulldogs and pugs have a focus on giving them a snout back, amongst other things. The standards for the conti bulldogs, for example, list them being able to breathe completely unobstructed even after exercise.
If you look at old photos and paintings of bulldogs and pugs, they used to have a snout. It's shocking how fucked up they got after 100 or so years of the rich white version of SMASHED and SLAMMED.
I hope conti bulldogs and similar new breeds catch on in the US, and replace the fucked up bulldogs/etc we have currently. The real test will be if institutions/teams like UGA that have bulldog mascots will be willing to stop using SMASHED&SLAMMED bulldogs, since unfortunately I can't see that change happening easy (despite how sadly short lived most of the recent Ugas have been, poor things).
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- Joined
- Feb 4, 2013
It's not hard to fix a lot of the broken breeds. Not all of the ones that have been ruined by showdog title chasers are cthuluioid horrors. Irish Setters are a good example, but they've been pretty well fixed and it's hasn't taken too long for the good ones to kind of take over.
- Joined
- May 25, 2013
Hope gsheps start getting functional again and the fucked up tiny back legs showdog shit falls out of fashion.
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2013
At least they banned cropped ears and docked tails for the breed in the 90s, that used to be standard. I understand tail docking for breeds where it is needed, but it wasn't for them and ear cropping is all kinds of evil.
- Joined
- May 25, 2013
I wish it was banned where I live, I still see tons of dogs with cropped ears and docked tails who are obviously family pets.
I hear AKC won't even accept Pembroke corgis for registration or w/e if you don't dock the tails.
Afaik tail docking is only needed for working dogs who are at risk of more serious injury from their tails being trampled by livestock.
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- Joined
- Feb 4, 2013
They can be registered, I think, but can't be shown in purebred shows (can't be spayed or neutered, either). Dog shows actually have a specific purpose that matters to a small number of people. Just having an AKC number tells you most of what you need to know if you need a purebred for whatever reason. If you need a working dog you're not interested in champion status, you're looking HIADM and HC all over the pedigree to know the dog will herd ducks like a mofo.
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2021
I've been meaning to get on here and post about this but KF is obviously fucky lately. Went to a bully show a few weeks ago for the first time in years. A few observations- the level of photoshopping done on these dogs is hilarious so they aren't nearly as "freaky" as what you see online, which is a good thing. There were a lot of dogs with very long sway backs. In addition to that, the a lot of the French Bulldogs had long legs and long muzzles.
The show was broken into two parts-a sanctioned show with actual judges and the fun show. What I saw in the actual show was nothing to abhorrent and that was refreshing. The fun show/table stacking is where the garbage dogs were shown and pretty much anyone who entered went home with some type of trophy. I did not see any drama or fighting and was disappointed lol
The show was broken into two parts-a sanctioned show with actual judges and the fun show. What I saw in the actual show was nothing to abhorrent and that was refreshing. The fun show/table stacking is where the garbage dogs were shown and pretty much anyone who entered went home with some type of trophy. I did not see any drama or fighting and was disappointed lol