How chickens are raised for meat
Modern broilers reach slaughter weight in four to six weeks, and the feed they need per kilogram has fallen sharply.
- stations
- 3
- things downstream
- 3
The short version
Meat chickens, called broilers, hatch from eggs after about 21 days of incubation. They are raised in large flocks on feed engineered for fast growth, kept in houses until they reach market weight, and then caught and sent to the processing plant.
-
Hatch the eggs
A fertile chicken egg hatches after about 21 days. The chick breaks out of the shell with an egg tooth and lives off the yolk sac for the first day or so.
-
Raise broiler flocks
Broilers are bred for fast growth, high feed conversion and low activity. In the US, the average broiler needed 1.91 kilograms of feed for each kilogram of live weight in 2011, down from 4.70 in 1925.
-
Catch at market weight
Most commercial broilers reach slaughter weight between four and six weeks of age. Slower-growing breeds take about 14 weeks.
Worth repeating
- The global chicken population exceeded 26.5 billion in 2023, with more than 50 billion birds produced annually for consumption.
- New Zealand farms have recorded the best broiler feed conversion in the world, at 1.38.
Where it goes next
Chickens feeds 3 lines directly.
Keep walking
Sources
Cite this page: "How chickens are raised for meat." Assembly Line, 2026-11-03. https://assemblyline.org/make/chickens