M ale chickens suffer immediate masceration moments after hatching. There is no reason for poultry farming operations to keep male chicks in a layer hen operation. Since males can not lay eggs, they are slaughtered immediately after birth. They are not suitable as broiler hens because they have not been genetically selected for harvesting their dead flesh. The daily wholesale destruction of millions of male chicks often involves gassing, boiling, or even grinding them alive. These animals are not granted a humane death, and their birth becomes entirely useless. For every new egg-laying hen born into todays factory farming system, a male chick is killed, or culled. As many as 300 million chicks are killed in the United States every year, and more than 6 billion total are killed around the world. It is a disturbing and wasteful practice, and it has its roots in the warped economics of chicken production. Most chicken meat comes from broiler chickens, bred to grow unnaturally big and fast. That is not the case with egg-laying hens, which have been bred to put all their energy toward laying. Consequently, when their egg output begins to wane, they have so little meat on them that they often do not enter the human food supply and are instead used as pet food, feed for other factory-farmed animals, or simply landfilled. This is why egg producers cull male chicks: The males from the leaner breeds used in egg production cost more to feed and house than they would ever sell for as meat, so they are economically useless to the industry