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Comment by ddulaney | Hacker News Reader

When I worked in a USPS facility, it was always a mix of emotions when a box started chirping. On the one hand, cute baby birds! On the other hand, they’re going through an ordeal right now (they got special non-machine handling, but it still wasn’t pleasant for them to be packed into cartons) and their destination was most likely a factory farm.

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In case it's helpful to know, it's highly likely that the baby birds that you helped shipped were destined for pretty nice places! Factory farms don't get their birds this way, but small farms do. Also of note, of the dozens times that we got baby birds shipped to our farm when I was a child, it was very very rare to find more than one or two that didn't survive the trip. And sometimes we'd get shipments without a single loss.

Newly hatched chickens can survive without food for more than 24 hours. They only want to sleep and can travel perfectly at this age, so is the usual way for amateurs to buy fancy chicken breeds or small chicken of known sex.

So, most probably those chicken would end having a happy life destroying carefully the backyard of somebody, one scratch at a time.

There is also a special kind of fishes that lay eggs that can travel perfectly without water in an envelope.

I don't see how anyone could possibly know what the subjective experience of being a day-old chick stuffed in a box would be like. But I can imagine what it would be like to be a human stuffed in a box, and that doesn't seem very pleasant. I don't see how the idea that it might be better for birds (who are pretty clearly sentient creatures) could be based on anything other than rationalization and wishful thinking.

I think the assumption that the fresh chicks just hatched from an egg (or in the case of a human came out a womb) wouldn’t be too panicked about confined spaces.

This is called "anthropomorphism" and is a form of fallacious reasoning.

I call it empathy.

Sympathy at best.

Real life !== Disney films.

I think a more apt comparison is to imagine a human being shipped in a padded shipping container with a dozen of her friends to keep her warm and help her feel safe.

I've had chicks shipped to me this way and it didn't appear to be traumatic at all for them. They grew into happy, healthy birds.

> I don't see how anyone could possibly know what the subjective experience of being a day-old chick stuffed in a box would be like.

But then you go on to pretend to do exactly that.

You’re projecting a negative human experience onto birds.

They only want to sleep and can travel perfectly at this age...

I'm dubious. There is well-established research on the importance of imprinting for new-born chicks across a wide variety of bird species. Therefore, even if the chick spends most of its time asleep, I would want to see research saying that there is no problem due to intentionally depriving the chick of an appropriate target to imprint on.

I've never noticed anything different between chicks we raised and those that came in the mail. They all come running when when we walk into the back pasture.

killifish are the fish you are talking about

we've mail ordered chicks many times. Pretty normal for backyard chicken wranglers. Our dozen or so birds have two acres of fenced, lush, half tree-canopied land and a barn to sleep in.

Where my wife is from, it's very common for neighbors to mail one another chicks and ducklings as Easter presents.

Factory farms special order birds and receive them via freight, not USPS.

I'm awaiting a box of 6 chicks right now, probably coming tomorrow, and they're going to have long and happy lives (I hope). Egg layers.

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