[Balding_Eagle]

Debeaking has been standard practice since (at least) before WWII. It wouldn’t suprise me to learn that it’s been around for hundreds of years. It has nothing to do with ‘going beserk’.

Where do you think the phrase ‘pecking order’ came from?

It came from observing chickens and how they naturally interact with the weaker chickens.

[4yearlurker]

I worked on chicken farms in South Jersey as a kid in the late 60s into the early 70s. All the chicks or pullets we would get delivered had their beaks burnt flat so when they got older they would not kill each other. Back then the chickens ran free in a large room. Chickens are cannibalistic and will attack each other. Once a bird receives a head wound that is bleeding all the other chickens just keep on pecking that spot.

[RegulatorCountry]

I’d say chickens packed into such close quarters that they end up pecking each other to death in quantities large enough to rationalize cutting all their beaks off to prevent it, are going berserk. Pecking order, henpecked, yes they refer to innate behavior. However, broiler chickens typically are not kept alive long enough for such dominance displays to become a problem, outside being crammed into extremely close quarters.

The practice was first performed in the thirties in a university research setting. It was the fifties before it began to be adopted, with breeding stock and not withbroiler hens. By the seventies, modern factory farming methods began to become common, and with consolidation in the industry, it is by far and away the predominant method, outside so-called free range operations, which themselves often actually aren’t.

So, you speak as if current practice is common and accepted, going back more than a genetation, when in fact it isn’t, having been banned in numerous countries.