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It's common practice in the poultry industry to amputate the beaks of chickens to prevent them pecking each other. Techniques of "debarking" vary, but in the UK it is performed on chicks when they are a few days old, and usually involves amputating one third of the upper part of the beak with a heated blade. The poultry industry has always assumed that chickens quickly recover, but evidence presented at the International Replica Omega Watches Ornithological Congress in New Zealand suggests otherwise. Dr Michael Gentle,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], of the Institute of Animal Physiology and Genetics Research in Edinburgh, has shown that chickens can feel chronic pain weeks, and sometimes even months, after the operation.

Chickens have pain receptors in their beaks, and so slicing their beaks off with a hot knife must hurt them. What Dr Gentle has found is that the pain may be delayed, as is the case with human burn victims. "The chickens are not in pain initially,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], but 24 hours later they show clear pain-related behavior." After the beak is amputated,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the remaining stump may take two to four weeks to heal. But even then, pain may continue: the damaged nerves still grow, and may be "abnormally and spontaneously active" (believed to be the cause of stump pain in human amputees). Even two months later, the stump is unusually sensitive to touch and temperature changes.

Many aspects of a chicken's behavior also suggest that it experiences long-term pain, and perhaps even the depression, typically felt by human amputees. In the first few weeks after debarking, a chicken spends more time resting than usual. And even six weeks later, when the stump has healed over, a chicken avoids using its beak.

The habit of pecking each other doesn't necessarily start off as aggressive behavior--it may simply be a substitute for pecking at litter--but it can quickly escalate once one bird is injured, and sometimes leads to the death of weaker birds.

Is debarking really the solution, though? A very preliminary survey in Scotland, of two commercial laying breeds, found debarking had no effect on the extent of feather and comb damage, or on body weights or the number of birds that died. A much more effective approach would be to remove the conditions--such as Cartier Replica overcrowding and bright light, for example, that are known to contribute to feather-pecking and cannibalism. Where chickens really have to be kept in such conditions, a more sensible solution than debarking, says Dr Gentle, would be to breed strains of chickens that don't peck each other.