Tractor Supply Company Mistreats Baby Chicks and Ducklings

MACHIPONGO, Va., April 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Each spring, customers buy thousands of baby chicks and ducklings from Tractor Supply stores in response to the company's "Chick Days" promotions (see photos) that lure shoppers to purchase the costly equipment needed to maintain the birds: brooders, heat lamps, coops, feed, and so on. 

Employees cannot care properly for the birds in their stores. Most do not recognize the suffering the chicks and ducklings are experiencing including sickness, starvation, dehydration, and lameness. Those who do are discouraged by company policy from intervening.

Unsold birds are destroyed by Tractor Supply after being offered for "Clearance."

Tractor Supply birds are routinely "gotten rid of" once the charm of "Oh, how cute" wears off. Buyers grow tired of caring for them, and few if any spend money on veterinary care. Birds are dumped in the woods, along roadsides, and offered on Craigslist. Sanctuaries get calls from people who find these fragile creatures wandering about, starving, lost and helpless.

"This year we've heard from more Tractor Supply shoppers than ever before," says Karen Davis, President of United Poultry Concerns. "Distressed by the inhumane 'tower' brooders in which the birds are being held this year on a metal grate with no soft bedding, they urge store managers to 'do something,' like fill dry water cups. Dying birds are taken to the backroom to die slowly in tanks, out of sight."

In this video, a farmer denounces "Tractor Supply's AWFUL New Brooders."

United Poultry Concerns joins people across the U.S. in urging Tractor Supply to stop selling baby birds and all live animals. At the very least, the company needs to eliminate the "tower" brooders which add to the inherent cruelty of treating living creatures as nothing but merchandise.

For more information, visit United Poultry Concerns at www.upc-online.org.

SOURCE United Poultry Concerns

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http://www.upc-online.org