[Stainless] Chuting Chicks -or- The Futility of Animal Rights

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Last Friday, I went out on a field job to a chicken hatchery to make and install a small stainless steel chute. Normally I don't take pictures or make post about the jobs I do because none of them are particularly interesting. However, this one turned out to be so incredibly pointless that I found it downright hilarious (in a very macabre way).The room I was working in was one of the sexing rooms. After the chicks hatch and are separated from the egg shells, the come in to the room on a conveyor through a hole in the wall. The conveyor dumps the chicks onto the circular conveyor of the sexing table. As the chicks travel around the table, workers pick them up, determine whether they are male or female, and toss them down the appropriate chute in the middle of the table. From the center of the table the male and female chicks are carried up sloped, divided, conveyor. At the top of this conveyor, the two genders part ways. The females are dropped onto a conveyor that takes them over to some other piece of equipment that counts them and dropes them into crates for shipping. The males, however, are dropped down into a big rectangular funnel. The problem here is the height of the drop from the end of the conveyor to the bottom of the funnel.See, this hatchery has been getting a lot of complaints about this from a bunch of animal rights people because there are codes (pushed through by the animal rights hippies) that say that the chicks cannot be subjected to a vertical fall of more than 18 inches. The drop into this funnel is about 36 inches.This is where I come in.My assignment was to make a removable short stainless chute that runs from the end of the sloped conveyor down into the funnel so that the male chicks never dropped more than 18 inches straight down.Since there was no real way to get enough measurements to fabricate something in the shop that would be easy to install, I was sent out to fit and fabricate on site. I formed a simple 7" wide 6" deep channel from 12ga. stainless on the press brake, grabbed a couple of pieces of 6"x12" 12 ga. stainless, some 1/2" SS round bar, loaded up on of the trucks and headed out.After cutting away some existing stainless that was no longer necessary, I welded the 1/2 round bar across the top of the male side of the sloped conveyor. (Sorry, the bar is out of focus, I didn't want to waste too much time taking pictures).After a bunch of trial and error and trips outside to the plasma cutter, I ended up with this:As you can see the next picture, whole thing pretty much just hangs off the the 1/2" round bar. The notch just above that small, rather pretty colored, weld is where I folded a small tab outward to keep the chute from swinging down and hitting the conveyor belt.Here is the other side of that tab. I ground a small notch out of the existing end of the conveyor for the tab to fit in, This keeps the weight of the chute from causing the hanging hooks to slip up and off the round bar. I also heated the tab up with the TIG torch and pounded it forward so that it also keeps the chute from shifting to the side.No, I have no idea what all that multicolored crud is on that bearing, I was afraid to touch it.Here's a bonus shot of the setup on the truck outside where I did all the plasma cutting, The red Ranger belongs to the shop and is there to supply the 220V power and the blue thing behind it is the shop's air compressor, and the other blue thing is my, personal, Longevity plasma/TIG machine:I post this picture just to irritate all the import haters on the board. Inside, I did all the welding with my (personal) Dynasty 200DX, I could've used the shop's little Maxstar but I don't like the fingertip amperage control and it's usually pretty beat up and barely working, thanks to my co-workers not knowing how to use it right. I would've done the welding with the Longevity machine had I not needed it for the plasma cutting. Also, I could've brought one of the shop's little Thermaldyne plasma machines, but they get so beat to heck by my colleagues that I didn't trust it to work out in the field.Now, don't forget, I said all this was pointless.The reason this was pointless was because of what happens to the male chicks after they fall into that big funnel. Here is the underside of that funnel:See where that tube goes? Here's a closer look:They call it the masticator.It sucks in the chicks, turns them into a fine pink paste and blows it up the tube on the other side where it ends up with, and is disposedof with, the waste eggshells. Turns out there was a reason they didn't bother to have a chute like this installed in the first place.That's right, this hatchery was forced, by the animal rights folks, to spend several hundred bucks (at least) to have me come out and put in a chute to keep the chicks from getting hurt despite the fact that six feet and less than a second later, they're all going to die instantly anyways.I was chuckling the whole time from the sheer absurdity of it all.Visit Tensaiteki.com
Reply:wow, hippies.
Reply:Yummers!  Masticated chicken fer din-din, with a side of shredded eggshells!Man, those animal rights clowns really should mind their own damned business once in a while ....
Reply:Is that where chicken nuggets come from?
Reply:Un-Freakin' Believable!  Actually, it's very believable... but scary in a way.  What next?  STOP THE INSANITY!!Work HARDER, not smarter! ------------------------ Miller Bobcat 250Millermatic 251Lincoln Precision TIG 185Hypertherm PM 600Hobart 135 HandlerOxweld 400 FlameMaster
Reply:Wow, and I thought circumcision was brutal. 9-11-2001......We Will Never ForgetRetired desk jockey. Hobby weldor with a little training. Craftsman O/A---Flat, Vert, Ovhd, Horz. Miller Syncrowave 250
Reply:Originally Posted by Brians_45Is that where chicken nuggets come from?
Reply:Originally Posted by rode2rouenActually, the masticated lil' roosters are fed to the lil' hens.The added egg shell gives the mix a nice crunchy texture that chicks love.
Reply:karma gonna get you signed old hippie
Reply:Originally Posted by MondoUmmm... Seems to me that Mad Cow Disease is the result of feeding cows so-called by-products from the slaughter of other cows.
Reply:you would think that the 3 foot fall may render the unconscious for the grinder, which might be a little more friendly. We should really give the chicks a choice....
Reply:Well, I was back at the same hatchery again today doing a different project and asked how the chute was working out.The guy I talked to said that the slope of the chute is just shallow enough that sometimes the chicks won't slide all the way down and two or three will get stuck. They would just sit there until another chick came sliding and knocked the whole group the rest of the way.So it seems that not only did I reduce the chance of them getting hurt before they died, but I also reduced the chance that they would die alone.Visit Tensaiteki.com
Reply:[QUOTE=rode2rouen;315033]Actually, the masticated lil' roosters are fed to the lil' hens.The added egg shell gives the mix a nice crunchy texture that chicks love. As the Pink Floyd song goes:"YOU CAN'T EAT YOUR MEAT,IF YOU DON'T EAT YOUR PUDDING! HOW CAN YOU HAVE YOUR PUDDING IF YOU DON'T EAT YOUR MEAT?"
Reply:Cocka-Doodle*Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr*MikeConstans Fides et IntegritasLincoln Weldanpower 150 ACAirco Aircomatic MIGet CAV II w/ spoolgunMillermatic 30a wirefeeder
Reply:Originally Posted by 7A749Hey. You made the bleeding hearts happy & got paid in the process.....It's the tought that counts. I think one of those human sized would be practical for the up & coming dictatorial nation with dissenters to dispose of & hundreds of thousands to feed. Maybe there's a market??? You already have the skills & a high level of experience!!"Soilent Green.....It's People!!!!!!!" STAND STILL, LADDY!!!!!!!!!
Reply:Soylent Green....It was way before my time, but I have heard it referenced before.  Anyways, to make a long story short, I just got done watching all 96min of it.  What a horrible, horrible, movie.  I'm not talking about the subject either.  The movie sucks.  The whole thing could have been condensed down to about 15min and it would have been better...
Reply:I can bet something like it already exists. Somewhere..........In the sick world we live in, nothing surprises me. Rendering plants grind up entire cows in big machines, but they're already dead. Still, the premise of considering something alive being sucked into a grinder with a politically correct name............It's called warfare, I believe ....Sure, it's the way it is. Morbid reality, but business is business.Check out "Man Behind The Sun" if you want to see some fictional first rate factually based human brutality. It's an old flick, but will make you think about just how brutal the human race can be.No need for that, just watch the 6 o'clock news.  That'll blow any brutal flick out of the water.Soylent Green, y'all ....
Reply:Thanks Steve.Putting a man in a vacuum tank to see what will happen to him, freezing a live womans arms and then ripping the flesh from her bones, sticking another mans arms into a big box filled with I am guessing dry ice then breaking his fingers and hands off or dissecting a young boy while he is still alive for his heart liver and brains just for their morbid curiosity and then calling it science?Thanks for directing me to that movie, I knew like most others that the Germans were doing experiments on prisoners during the war, but I had no idea that Japan was doing it too, it puts a new perspective on the other front during the war! I could just imagine someone, somewhere building a big human paste maker machine!#1. If you don't like what I wrote, or if it offends you, then don't read it!#2. I am living life the way I see fit, if you don't like the way I'M living, tough sh**!
Reply:Originally Posted by 7A749Yeah, I cannot say, by far how much is fact or straight fiction.If someone is going to dump on the Wiki links, Snopes "facts" & whatever other "facts" there are disputing it, don't bother. I really don't care. You got more time to burn than me..... That's not really the point here..Whatever the case, it makes you think.
Reply:I thought this was about efficienty sorting out chicks, that can lay eggs, and those that can't?????   how ever, did human experiments, ever get involved here?????    Personally, I like and appreciate Cakes, Cookies, and eggs with breakfast, on weekends.  I like them cheap, too.   If this means, there has to be a fast, efficient way of getting rid of the guy chicks, so be it.    heck, it only hurts for a couple seconds ........
Reply:Understand, any layer ranch, standing rule is, you see a rooster, he's dead.   Very easy, grab the feet, grab the head, give a little twist, pull, it's over.   Do it right, there's no blood.    Tough, yes.    Practical, also yes.  WTF, should anybody pay, to feed a chicken, that's not laying any eggs?????