# Battery Chicken Farm, Cambridge



## UrbanX (Mar 6, 2008)

This place is horrible. 

I never want to go near a chicken farm, or chicken again. Although the chickens have gone, the stench has not. There are only 4 pic’s: That was as long as I could stand it in there. 

Below Deck: Yes that’s all chicken poop. 






Ironic:





Cages





Looking down rows of cages:





That’s all as I’m off to throw up.


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## snappel (Mar 6, 2008)

All the more reason to buy free-range...


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## Luciferishere (Mar 6, 2008)

I'm starting to buy free-range chicken can't stand them cooped up like that.


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## smileysal (Mar 6, 2008)

Cheers for posting this. With luck everyone will buy free range and these cages will be no more.

Did a city and guilds in agriculture years ago, and as part of my course had to go to various types of farms. battery, free range, organic etc. as soon as i walked in the battery shed, i wanted to quit my course there and then. thousands of chickens in these tiny cages, 6 to a cage (not sure if they've got less in them nowadays, but then it was 6), they couldn't move, couldn't turn, couldn't sit down, it was horrible. I won't tell you what happens when they're ready to be killed, thats even worse how they treat them and carry then. I'll leave that to your imagination (but its not good).

Went veggie for years after that, now if i eat chicken, i only buy free range, and from a farm i know they're kept in proper free range conditions. 

Cheers again,

 Sal


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## shadowman (Mar 6, 2008)

Hughes Chicken Run...or something like that...Free the Chickens


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## diluted (Mar 6, 2008)

Its easy enough to say people should eat free range, but like everyone I know went to buy free range after that show by Hugh Double-Barreled-Fancy-Name, but shops just don't stock them and no-one I knew could get hold of one. Either places didn't stock them or stocked so few that they sold out.

Good shots. If you go back, try wearing some sort of gas mask/respirator.
Also you can get a scented ointment to put under your nose to overpower smells. I believe people who work in morgues/mortuaries use them so that they don't smell the dead bodies.


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## UrbanX (Mar 6, 2008)

I am NOT going back!!!!

I didn't mean for it to turn into a chickens rights thing, but...

It's hard not to eat battery chickens really, I mean if you get a ready meal, or a chicken sandwich they're going to be the lowest of the low. 

Just Eurgh!


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## snappel (Mar 6, 2008)

diluted said:


> Good shots. If you go back, try wearing some sort of gas mask/respirator. Also you can get a scented ointment to put under your nose to overpower smells. I believe people who work in morgues/mortuaries use them so that they don't smell the dead bodies.


_Ring-a-ring o' roses, a pocket full of posies..._

See if that helps when we all get bird flu. I reckon I might have it anyway - feel rough and the Sudafed's just not helping.


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## King Al (Mar 6, 2008)

Reminds me of a mink farm I visited a while back, bloody horrible


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## Foxylady (Mar 6, 2008)

UrbanX said:


> It's hard not to eat battery chickens really, I mean if you get a ready meal, or a chicken sandwich they're going to be the lowest of the low. Just Eurgh!



Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I don't eat ready meals, takeaways or meat from supermarkets. I've seen quite a few of the secret films of batteries and it's just disgusting. :icon_evil
Good pics though! Don't blame you for not going back!


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## ThenewMendoza (Mar 6, 2008)

There's one of these about ten minutes up the road from, keep meaning to pop in and have a look, but, then I forget....

TnM


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## mechanised (Mar 6, 2008)

> Cheers for posting this. With luck everyone will buy free range and these cages will be no more.



It's not that simple, sadly. The fact is there simply isn't enough room for all the chickens eaten in this country (or elsewhere) to be free range! (You'd need an area the size of America, or something ridiculous!) ...And for those millions living in poverty, feeding their family on a budget (with chickens at a price only possible through this kind of battery farm), free range will always be a luxury beyond their means. 

(I'm a vegetarian myself - something which obviously has to be much more widespread if the majority of animal products are to be free range.)

Fascinating pictures, by the way - thanks for posting such an unusual location.


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## Foxylady (Mar 6, 2008)

diluted said:


> ...everyone I know went to buy free range after that show by Hugh Double-Barreled-Fancy-Name, but shops just don't stock them and no-one I knew could get hold of one...



The guy opened a shop in Axminster backalong and he sells his free range chickens for exhorbitant prices...probably even higher than in London...and this is in a little market town that isn't picturesque, not on the tourist beat, nor somewhere where people have holiday cottages and it's where people are lucky to find a job, let alone get anything more than minimum wage. If you bought one of his chickens it would have to last you all week because you wouldn't be able to buy anything else!
Sorry about the digression, but that guy really gets my goat! :icon_evil


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## krela (Mar 7, 2008)

Foxylady said:


> If you bought one of his chickens it would have to last you all week because you wouldn't be able to buy anything else!
> Sorry about the digression, but that guy really gets my goat! :icon_evil



Indeed and that is the point he was making. Most people buy a cheap chicken, cut most of the breast meat off it (and make a pigs ear of that generally) break the legs off then chuck the rest away.

You CAN make a chicken last 3 meals quite easily, but we choose not to because we are a country of wasters and people who can't be bothered to cook. Meaning the price HAS to be cheaper because people only expect to get one meal out of it.


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## Foxylady (Mar 7, 2008)

krela said:


> You CAN make a chicken last 3 meals quite easily, but we choose not to because we are a country of wasters and people who can't be bothered to cook. Meaning the price HAS to be cheaper because people only expect to get one meal out of it.



Absolutely true. I had a small chicken for my Christmas meal and it lasted all week as I can and do cook and even know how to make chicken stock from the bones, so nothing goes to waste. But I still wouldn't spend the amount he asks for one as it really is a ludicrous price, which was the point I was making. I can get free-range elsewhere from local butchers at a fraction of the cost. Can't recall how much he charges but I'm going into Axminster today so I might have a look.


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## krela (Mar 7, 2008)

Foxylady said:


> Absolutely true. I had a small chicken for my Christmas meal and it lasted all week as I can and do cook and even know how to make chicken stock from the bones, so nothing goes to waste. But I still wouldn't spend the amount he asks for one as it really is a ludicrous price, which was the point I was making. I can get free-range elsewhere from local butchers at a fraction of the cost. Can't recall how much he charges but I'm going into Axminster today so I might have a look.



Locally produced sustainable true free range chickens should cost about £5.50/kg.


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## King Al (Mar 7, 2008)

I love a left over chicken roll, stick a bit of mayonnaise on there maybe a bit of bacon if you've got any...


hungry now


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## DJhooker (Mar 7, 2008)

How ironic the bit of tape that says 'produced to freedom food specifications'....


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## Foxylady (Mar 7, 2008)

krela said:


> Locally produced sustainable true free range chickens should cost about £5.50/kg.



Had a decko in his shop and, to be fair to the guy, he sells a lot of local produce, not just his own. There weren't any of the Rivercottage chucks, but there were others and they ranged in price from £5-75 to £7-30 per kg, which meant they were anything from £7-75 to £14-30 per chuck. His own, if I remember correctly, were more expensive than that...big thing about it in the local paper backalong.
Had a look at some of the other produce on sale, just for interest's sake. Mushrooms were £6-50 per kg...pffffftt! And bread was anything from £1-50 for a tiny white loaf to £3-50 for a large bloomer. Soda bread was £2-50 per loaf!!! I make my own for pennies...I'm clearly in the wrong business!


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## krela (Mar 7, 2008)

Foxylady said:


> Had a decko in his shop and, to be fair to the guy, he sells a lot of local produce, not just his own. There weren't any of the Rivercottage chucks, but there were others and they ranged in price from £5-75 to £7-30 per kg, which meant they were anything from £7-75 to £14-30 per chuck. His own, if I remember correctly, were more expensive than that...big thing about it in the local paper backalong.
> Had a look at some of the other produce on sale, just for interest's sake. Mushrooms were £6-50 per kg...pffffftt! And bread was anything from £1-50 for a tiny white loaf to £3-50 for a large bloomer. Soda bread was £2-50 per loaf!!! I make my own for pennies...I'm clearly in the wrong business!



I would undoubtedly say you're paying for the 'River Cottage' brand, but locally produced produce made on a reasonable scale and sold locally costs money. 

It's a problem though, the people that tend to buy organic locally produced food are the upper middle classes who can afford it, and the laws of capitalist economics mean that retailers will always charge what people can afford to pay, which in this case is a lot. Leaving us who can't afford to pay so much out in the cold. The farmers market in Bristol for example is outrageously expensive, the same £2.50 you saw today for a loaf of organic bread when like you say you could buy organic flour and yeast and make it for about 50p.

Surely there should be some happy medium somewhere though?


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