The Atlantic - The Best Kind of Chicken Farming

By Helene York
January 6, 2011

"Fifteen-day-old chicks are cute. They are soft, spritely, and their high-pitched chatter is sweet. In most chicken houses, they have enough room to move around in the first month of life, and that's the image corporate chicken farmers want you to see. But the first month isn't the issue, as my recent trips to commercial chicken operations have confirmed. More than 9 billion chicks grow to maturity and are eaten as chicken every year in the U.S. Most are housed in 'group houses'—40 feet by 400 feet—where they are free to roam indoors as long as they aren't too big to do so. And that happens pretty quickly. An average 'broiler' grows to market live weight of seven to eight pounds in 51 to 58 days..."

http://www.theatlantic.com/food/archive/2011/01/the-best-kind-of-chicken-farming/68520/