Chicken is one of Australia’s most popular meat choices and our poultry industry boasts leading breeding programs, high standards of animal welfare and advanced technology for processing. Most people would be surprised at the level of science and care that goes into raising chickens - below we have outlined the key parts to chicken production to give you some information on where this popular food source comes from and to dispel some of those myths about how chickens are raised.

Breeding

Chickens grow larger today than in the past due to a process known as selective breeding.

This refers to a process where the strongest, healthiest and greatest meat producing chickens are chosen to breed and produce generations of broiler chickens. Broilers are those chickens raised specifically for their meat, as opposed to chickens raised for eggs.

Once those chickens selected for breeding lay the eggs, it takes 21 days for a chick to develop. Whilst the chick is growing inside the shell, the mother hen would normally use her body to keep the hens warm until the chick is ready to break out. When producing large numbers of chickens though, these eggs are sent to a special incubation facility where that same warmth is provided to the growing chicks by man made technology. This ensures developing chickens get the level of warmth they need and in a way that hundreds of eggs can hatch at the same time to meet the constant high demand for chicken meat.

Once hatched, the chickens are sent to a broiler farm.


Rearing chickens

Broiler or meat chickens live in large, specially built sheds which on average house about 40,000 chickens each. These are large sheds where all chickens are free to roam and have easy access to food and water. NO CAGES are used in the chicken meat industry anywhere in Australia.

In fact, for major producers like Steggles, animal welfare is a top priority. We always ensure, that at a minimum, we do not put more birds into a shed than the government regulations allow, but we strive to actually stock under this as we only ever want to provide the best possible conditions for our birds.

Normally, a chicken farm will have a number of sheds on it and so can have hundreds of thousands of chickens to care for at any one time.

One really important factor when raising chickens is maintaining their body temperatures as it can cause all sorts of health problems if they get too hot or cold. For this reason, modern poultry farms now use tunnel-ventilated sheds – these sheds have large fans which help bring fresh air into the shed and keep it circulating. There are also special sensors which monitor the air temperature and adjust it to be warmer or cooler, depending on the chickens’ requirements, which often depends on their age.