Factory-farmed chickens

At any given moment, approximately 1.6 billion chickens are alive in factory farm conditions in the United States: about 1.2 billion broilers raised for meat (the US raised 9.3 billion in 2024, each slaughtered at about 47 days old) and about 380 million hens kept for eggs. Over 99% of them live on factory farms.

If you packed those 1.2 billion meat chickens together at typical factory-farm density, they would fill roughly 32 square miles, a patch of land smaller than many cities. That's about 58,000 birds per acre, or 115 times as dense as the suggested humane standard of 500 per acre.

It's impossible to hold a number like 1.6 billion in your head. Below are 1.6 billion dots, one for each chicken. Scroll down to see them all. For more info on the life of a chicken represented by each dot you can read this page. This is a map of where chicken farms are distributed in a few states.

If you would like to help end this, the single best thing you can do is set up a recurring donation to an effective animal charity. This website is one among many with recommendations for where to donate, and has estimates of how many animals you can save.