Wrestling 6,000 Hens for $6 an Hour

Each hen house contains about 3,000 hens. If the inseminator crew does two houses a day, that's 6,000 hens a day. Figuring a 10-hour day, that's 600 hens per hour, or 10 a minute. Two breakers do 10 a minute, or each breaker "breaks" five hens a minute, or a hen every 12 seconds. Needless to say, at this rate, the handling of birds is fast and rough.

This rate also puts pressure on the drivers to keep a steady flow of birds into the chute to supply the pit. Having been through this week after week, the birds fear the chute and balk and huddle up. The driver literally kicks them into the chute. The idea is to terrify at least one bird, who squawks, beats her wings in panic, and thus terrifies the others in her group. Thus the drivers create enough pain and terror behind the birds to force them to plunge ahead to the pain and terror that they fear lies ahead of them.

The offspring of "breeding turkeys" also have a miserable life, crowded together in a filthy factory farm. At just 5 months old, they are trucked to the slaughterhouse, where their throats will be slit—often while they're still conscious.

Upon breaking each hen, she usually blows out a gob of runny shit. This is within 6 to 8 inches of your face when you are holding the hen across your chest, pulling her legs down with the right hand while pulling her ass upward with the left.

While herding the birds from the open floor into the bunching pen, one comes across the occasional dead bird on the floor. That one morning, we picked up five or six dead ones in each house.

The crew worked at this fast-paced rate for 11 hours at a stretch at $6 per hour. They had no formal breaks. No breakfast, no lunch hour. The only breaks came by chance, when a machine malfunctioned or when the semen syringes were slow to come. At about 12 or 1, big, bad DeWayne got all generous and paternalistic (after yelling and barking orders all day) and bought everyone a "sody." For this smidgen of kindness in a day of brutality, scowls, threats, and meanness, we were, I suppose, supposed to be grateful. We got to sit outside among swarms of flies around the pile of dead birds and drink cokes for 10 to 15 minutes. At the time, I asked the least hostile and belligerent guy about the workload, the pace, and the no-breaks routine. He told me that the crews are given 30 minutes off for lunch but that this crew worked through their lunch break in order to get paid for the time. Imagine: These guys worked at this shit 10 to 12 hours straight without a break or a bite to eat just to get another $3 a day on their paycheck.

I have never done such hard, fast, dirty, disgusting work in my life. Ten hours of kicking birds, grabbing birds, wrestling birds, jerking them upside-down, facing their pushed-open assholes, dodging their spurting shit, breathing the dust stirred up by panicked and excited birds and beating wings, breathing the turkey down/dander, flying around the pit, taking verbal abuse from DeWayne and the others on the crew—without a coffee break or a bite to eat. Not that I could have eaten anything among all this.

When I left, DeWayne, at his most surly and threatening, yelled at me as I passed the pit: "Be here at 5 in the morning." Yeah, right, DeWayne. I wouldn't miss your 10-12 hour day of shitwork at $6 an hour for anything in the world.