Life just got easier

March 7, 2005 8:13 AM

Bright Coopare an industrial farm supplies hardware manufacturer whose latest product, the "e-z catch" is essentially a giant street sweeper used for rounding up loose chickens in a coop. For a fascinating & kind of horrifying quicktime video of the device in action, click here.
posted by jonson (27 comments total)

Yikes.

Thanks for the video.

I'm not vegetarian -- in fact, I'm due in a few weeks to round up our extra roosters for the soup pot. I know these sorts of videos are supposed to make me want to go veggie. They don't. But they do make me want to stop treating animals like machine parts.
posted by argybarg at 8:21 AM on March 7, 2005

Yikes is right. WWTGD?*


(What would Temple Grandin do?
posted by scratch at 8:24 AM on March 7, 2005

That is quite staggering.

Chickens
1. scared by the noise
2. scared by the movement
3. scared by being hemmed in
4. scared by being swept up in those luxurious big fronds
5. thrown into a battery cage at the other end, risking bone breakage

They could hire small boys at the end of the forklift journey to throw pebbles at them or poke them with sticks, thereby maximising animal welfare!

If only I'd thought up this little slice of utopia first.
posted by NinjaPirate at 8:25 AM on March 7, 2005

BGAAAAWK!
posted by quonsar at 8:25 AM on March 7, 2005

But do the chickens have large talons?
posted by sourwookie at 8:28 AM on March 7, 2005

Reminds me of Soylent Green...
posted by cows of industry at 8:33 AM on March 7, 2005

Do they have what?
posted by electroboy at 8:34 AM on March 7, 2005

(via boing boing)
posted by chrisgrau at 8:41 AM on March 7, 2005

(not necessarily)
posted by 31d1 at 8:46 AM on March 7, 2005

fuck boingboing.
posted by quonsar at 8:48 AM on March 7, 2005

Jonson is such a racist.
posted by guruguy9 at 8:55 AM on March 7, 2005

that looks delicious
posted by Mach5 at 9:03 AM on March 7, 2005

Such a short step to this
posted by edgeways at 9:07 AM on March 7, 2005

Mechanised poultry loaders have been around for a while now (since the early 90s in Denmark I believe). To keep things in perspective, what they replace (manual catching) is worse, both for the crews (stress) and for the animals (stress and injuries resulting in products unfit for sale). The usual 10-person crew catching tens of thousands of chickens by their legs and wings and throwing them into a truck as fast as they can wouldn't make a nice video either. These machines are supposed to be an improvement and the early reports from farmers tend to support this: lower operational costs (at least for turkeys), less stressful work for the crews and the farmers and less damaged carcases (22% decrease according to this article (in French)).
posted by elgilito at 9:40 AM on March 7, 2005

Elgilito - you seem to know an awful lot about chicken fucking - errrrrr catching.
posted by guruguy9 at 9:47 AM on March 7, 2005

I'd love to see a giant one of these used for crowd control. I can totally see it in our dystopian future.

PS this video is awesome when you're listening to "Mixed Bizness" by Beck. It's like a chicken rave or something. I was half expecting Boxy Brown to bust in and be all "They was chickens, baby. It was a hen hizzy!"
posted by buriednexttoyou at 9:51 AM on March 7, 2005

I'm not a vegetarian, but I have tried a few times. I managed to cut pork and beef out about ten years ago, chicken and lamb are probably a half a dozen times a month and seafood 24/7. These videos DO make me want to go veggie every time and I feel bad when I realize that I forget to feel bad every time something dies so I can eat (no, not salad). There, I said it out loud. I don't care if you think I'm weak or silly.
posted by lazymonster at 10:05 AM on March 7, 2005

Do they have what? posted by electroboy
posted by heydanno at 12:20 PM on March 7, 2005

You can do it, lazymonster!
posted by Vulpyne at 12:31 PM on March 7, 2005

I apologize halfheartedly to you vegans out there, this clip did nothing but make me hungry for some Popeye's. That's a damn nice machine there. Seriously -- I bet it's faster/cheaper/more efficient then by hand. And when you get down to it, they're being bred for food, k, not for enhancing the world's chicken population.
posted by cavalier at 12:48 PM on March 7, 2005

I actually spent a couple of hours doing a chicken round-up on a farm once, and, let me tell you, they're not any happier to have the human touch.

Basically, you stuff 4 of them in a big bucket, throw a lid on it, hand it off to a runner, and another runner runs up and gives you a new bucket. At the other end, they empty the buckets into one of those huge chicken cage racks (just like the ones in that video) by banging it against the side. If anything, this looks way more gentle than the average farm worker. Then again, a humongous version of this would probably be more gentle than the average riot cop too, so...
posted by boaz at 12:56 PM on March 7, 2005

kinda spooky, i guess...but, meh...not really different than what already goes on....and i only object to that because it's unhealthy for people...
posted by es_de_bah at 1:59 PM on March 7, 2005

I had the same thought buriednexttoyou had. I can see our Fearless Leaders using a larger version of this against protestors, er, terra-ists at a future WTO pow-wow... feeding into an Ultimate Shredder.
posted by Enron Hubbard at 3:24 PM on March 7, 2005

I'd have to say that the machine is probably way more humane than human grabbers and stuffers. I grew up on a pig farm, and let me tell you, animals are a bunch of stubborn fuckers. The longer you work with them, the more angry it makes you.

I would hazard to say that towards the end of a day of getting pecked and scratched, you start throwing those chickens harder.
posted by graventy at 4:43 PM on March 7, 2005

This honestly doesn't bother me very much. I've had personal contact with chickens before. They're brainless, gross little creatures.
And I'm really impressed with that machine. I wonder how the chickens fit between those tines.
posted by blacklite at 8:59 PM on March 7, 2005

Sorry, jeepers, I had absolutely no idea that this was an improvement in animal welfare.

I can't say that makes me feel a great deal better, but at least I'm better informed.
posted by NinjaPirate at 2:35 AM on March 8, 2005

heydanno

I don't understand a word you just said.
posted by electroboy at 11:15 AM on March 9, 2005