Welfare Footprint Project has, in my view, the best analysis of the (physical and psychological) pain farmed chickens go through on average under conventional factory farm conditions (and with specific welfare improvements).
They donât cover âgoodsâ in their lives, but you could come up with estimates/âranges for these based on life expectancies and the kinds of goods you might expect, their durations and frequencies. Their life expectancies are:
1.5-2 years for egg-laying hens.
40-60 days for chickens raised for meat (other than broiler breeders, who live 1.5-2 years and are probably chronically hungry with conventional breeds).
They define 4 categories of intensities of pain: Annoying, Hurtful, Disabling and Excruciating. To summarize the definitions from this link:
Annoying pain can be ignored most of the time and results in little behavioural change.
Hurtful pain prevents engagement in positive activities with no immediate benefits like play and dustbathing, and animals with Hurtful pain would be aware of this pain most of the time, although can focus on other things and sometimes ignore it.
Disabling pain canât be ignored and is continuously distressing.
Excruciating pain is not tolerable. It can lead to extremely reckless behaviour to end it, e.g. exposure to predators, loud vocalizations. Things like scalding and severe burning.
Assuming symmetric ethical views, I would guess all of their pleasures (and other goods) would be at most as good as âHurtful painâ can be bad, because âDisabling painâ, by definition, canât be ignored and prevents enjoyment/âpositive welfare (of the kind they typically experience, presumably), and intuitively the kinds of enjoyment/âpositive welfare they can experience in factory farm conditions do not seem intense to me.
The kinds of pleasures I might expect in chickens would be from eating, comfort/ârest and maybe just interest in things happening around them. Given the environments in conventional factory farms, I donât expect play, mating or parenting. Maybe chickens farmed for meat dustbathe (egg-laying hens in conventional cages wouldnât). I donât know if they form positive social bonds in these environments, but they might cuddle or preen/âgroom each other. I donât know if preening/âgrooming is enjoyable for chickens (I havenât looked into this). Maybe they can imagine things (visually or otherwise), and derive enjoyment from that. Maybe they enjoy some of their dreams, but presumably their dreams could be bad, too.
Over the 1.5-2 years of their lives (including transportation and slaughter), conventional egg-laying hens are estimated to spend:
431 hours=18 days, or ~2.5% of their lives, with Disabling pain
4054 hours=169 days, or 23% of their lives, with Hurtful pain
Over the 45-50* days of their lives (ignoring transportation and slaughter), conventional chickens raised for meat (broilers) are estimated to spend:
51 hours=2.1 days, or ~4.5% of their lives, with Disabling pain
297 hours=12.4 days, or ~26% of their lives, with Hurtful pain
The above estimates:
Allow pains from different sources to overlap in time and sums their durations even if they overlap, so the actual durations could be shorter. I would guess Hurtful pain would be ignored when also experiencing Disabling pain (from another source).
Assume the chickens are not in pain while they sleep. From a quick Google search, chickens sleep about 8 hours a day, so they spend 1â3 of their time sleeping. I donât know how much WFP assumed they sleep, and itâs plausible their pain often keeps them from sleeping.
My own guess would be that under a symmetric ethical view like classical utilitarianism, each of the Disabling pain or the Hurtful pain alone would outweigh the good in these chickensâ lives in expectation, and both together would very likely outweigh the good, since
It seems like these chickens spend the equivalent of ~1/â3 of their waking hours with Hurtful pain. (Shorter since pains from multiple sources may be experienced at the same time but their durations are added. Still, multiple pains at the same time are probably together worse than any of them alone at a time, per second.)
At best, their goods will be as good (per second) as Hurtful pain can be bad, and they wonât be experienced enough of the time to make up for the Hurtful pain.
Iâd guess Disabling pain is at least ~10x ~5x as bad as Hurtful pain on average per second, so the Disabling pain in their lives probably contributes about as much or more at least half as much bad overall as the Hurtful pain. (EDIT: adjusted from at least ~10x to at least ~5x)
* The typical broiler lives 40-45 days, but WFP added the pain from 1/â140th of the average female broiler breeder, who lives 1-2 years and produces ~140 chickens for meat. 2 years/â140=5.2 days.
Welfare Footprint Project has, in my view, the best analysis of the (physical and psychological) pain farmed chickens go through on average under conventional factory farm conditions (and with specific welfare improvements).
Here are the pages for:
Egg-laying hens.
Chickens raised for meat (excluding transportation and slaughter, which seems very bad in live shackle slaughter, with birdsâ bones frequently broken; WFP is also looking into slaughter).
They donât cover âgoodsâ in their lives, but you could come up with estimates/âranges for these based on life expectancies and the kinds of goods you might expect, their durations and frequencies. Their life expectancies are:
1.5-2 years for egg-laying hens.
40-60 days for chickens raised for meat (other than broiler breeders, who live 1.5-2 years and are probably chronically hungry with conventional breeds).
They define 4 categories of intensities of pain: Annoying, Hurtful, Disabling and Excruciating. To summarize the definitions from this link:
Annoying pain can be ignored most of the time and results in little behavioural change.
Hurtful pain prevents engagement in positive activities with no immediate benefits like play and dustbathing, and animals with Hurtful pain would be aware of this pain most of the time, although can focus on other things and sometimes ignore it.
Disabling pain canât be ignored and is continuously distressing.
Excruciating pain is not tolerable. It can lead to extremely reckless behaviour to end it, e.g. exposure to predators, loud vocalizations. Things like scalding and severe burning.
Assuming symmetric ethical views, I would guess all of their pleasures (and other goods) would be at most as good as âHurtful painâ can be bad, because âDisabling painâ, by definition, canât be ignored and prevents enjoyment/âpositive welfare (of the kind they typically experience, presumably), and intuitively the kinds of enjoyment/âpositive welfare they can experience in factory farm conditions do not seem intense to me.
The kinds of pleasures I might expect in chickens would be from eating, comfort/ârest and maybe just interest in things happening around them. Given the environments in conventional factory farms, I donât expect play, mating or parenting. Maybe chickens farmed for meat dustbathe (egg-laying hens in conventional cages wouldnât). I donât know if they form positive social bonds in these environments, but they might cuddle or preen/âgroom each other. I donât know if preening/âgrooming is enjoyable for chickens (I havenât looked into this). Maybe they can imagine things (visually or otherwise), and derive enjoyment from that. Maybe they enjoy some of their dreams, but presumably their dreams could be bad, too.
Based on Welfare Footprint Project:
Over the 1.5-2 years of their lives (including transportation and slaughter), conventional egg-laying hens are estimated to spend:
431 hours=18 days, or ~2.5% of their lives, with Disabling pain
4054 hours=169 days, or 23% of their lives, with Hurtful pain
Over the 45-50* days of their lives (ignoring transportation and slaughter), conventional chickens raised for meat (broilers) are estimated to spend:
51 hours=2.1 days, or ~4.5% of their lives, with Disabling pain
297 hours=12.4 days, or ~26% of their lives, with Hurtful pain
The above estimates:
Allow pains from different sources to overlap in time and sums their durations even if they overlap, so the actual durations could be shorter. I would guess Hurtful pain would be ignored when also experiencing Disabling pain (from another source).
Assume the chickens are not in pain while they sleep. From a quick Google search, chickens sleep about 8 hours a day, so they spend 1â3 of their time sleeping. I donât know how much WFP assumed they sleep, and itâs plausible their pain often keeps them from sleeping.
My own guess would be that under a symmetric ethical view like classical utilitarianism, each of the Disabling pain or the Hurtful pain alone would outweigh the good in these chickensâ lives in expectation, and both together would very likely outweigh the good, since
It seems like these chickens spend the equivalent of ~1/â3 of their waking hours with Hurtful pain. (Shorter since pains from multiple sources may be experienced at the same time but their durations are added. Still, multiple pains at the same time are probably together worse than any of them alone at a time, per second.)
At best, their goods will be as good (per second) as Hurtful pain can be bad, and they wonât be experienced enough of the time to make up for the Hurtful pain.
Iâd guess Disabling pain is at least
~10x~5x as bad as Hurtful pain on average per second, so the Disabling pain in their lives probably contributesabout as much or moreat least half as much bad overall as the Hurtful pain. (EDIT: adjusted from at least ~10x to at least ~5x)* The typical broiler lives 40-45 days, but WFP added the pain from 1/â140th of the average female broiler breeder, who lives 1-2 years and produces ~140 chickens for meat. 2 years/â140=5.2 days.