Chickens that are raised to produce meat are called broiler chickens, while chickens that produce eggs for the grocery store are called “layers”. Farms with broiler chickens start with chicks that are one day old and raise them to market weight (about 2.2 kg or 4.8 lbs) which takes just over one month.
But where do those day-old chicks come from? They come from hatcheries, which are special facilities that incubate broiler hatching eggs (different from the unfertilized eggs that you would buy at the store). Hatcheries get their broiler hatching eggs from specific farms that raise broiler breeder chickens.
On broiler breeding farms, the chickens grow from chicks a few days old until they are ready to start laying eggs that will one day hatch and become broiler chickens. Before they begin laying eggs, female chickens are called pullets and they are fed differently than the male chickens because of their different growth rates and nutritional requirements.
Hens begin laying broiler hatching eggs at about 26 weeks of age and continue laying for another 35 to 40 weeks (until they are about a year and 3 months old). Broiler breeder farms have automated egg gathering systems where the eggs roll from the nest box onto a conveyor belt to an egg gathering station. Broiler hatching eggs are collected several times a day and kept in a temperature-controlled room until they can be sent to the hatchery. The hatchery picks up the hatching eggs from the broiler breeder farm one to two times per week.
Hatcheries have to be registered with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. They must abide by regulations about cleanliness to keep the incubators free of pathogens that might cause the chicks to become ill or result in foodborne illness.
When they arrive from the hatching egg farm, eggs are placed in incubators where they are kept warm and automatically turned at regular intervals. After about 21 days, the broiler eggs begin to hatch. The incubators are then opened to reveal thousands of chicks who have pecked their way out of their shells. These newly-hatched chicks are kept warm and loaded to a climate-controlled transport truck, which delivers them to a broiler chicken farm. This is the start of the cycle of for broiler chickens that are raised to produce chicken meat.
