This weekend Animal Freedom Aotearoa took a small group of people to see the reality of broiler chicken farming in Auckland.Broiler chickens are 'meat chickens' and there are over 87 million bred and killed in New Zealand annually making it the biggest industry of death in this country (aside from fishing).

We apporached the farm and saw that there was a truck onsite re-filling the feed silos. We waited for a bit but then decided that we should just try our chances, so we headed for the sheds.

The first shed that we entered had about 30,000 chicks who were about two weeks old. At this stage there was some space in the sheds for them to move about however in three to four weeks they will esstentially be wing to wing.

We went into another shed to see if the chicks there were of a similar age or were older; they were the same. After only two weeks the ammonia in these sheds was overwhelming and it is hard to believe that these chickens have to spend their lives breathing it in day after day.

Our visit was breif but had an impact on those we took.

For more images from our tour click here.

Three weeks later we took everyone back to the farm to see how much the chickens had grown. In just three weeks the chickens had grown heaps and the room available to them reduced significantly. The chickens have also become much louder and the ammonia in the sheds has increased alot. We also found many more dead chickens including one who was dying while we were one the farm.