TRACTOR SUPPLY:
CRUELER THAN EVER TO BABY CHICKS
Tractor Supply’s animal cruelty must be challenged.
Photo by Davida G. Breier. Tractor Supply chicks never experience the comfort and care of their own mother hen. They’re nothing but things for this company to make money from.
Dear Friends,
Since posting Protect Baby Chicks & Ducklings: Sign & Share Petition and Ducklings & Baby Chicks are NOT Easter Toys! Take Action! in late February, we’ve received emails from Tractor Supply visitors describing an increase in the cruelty of this company’s local stores, as summarized in the following email to United Poultry Concerns, March 5, 2021:
“I am not sure to whom I should file a complaint. Perhaps you can point me in the right direction. I went to Tractor Supply to pick up sunflower seeds and to my horror I saw baby chicks for sale in a new display that houses the chicks of different breeds stacked on top of each other and they are walking on wire mesh! It was very disturbing and quite different from how they were housed last year. There is no place for them to rest/sleep comfortably and they looked very stressed. Thank you very much for reading my email. Please let me know if there is anything I can do. I am a certified veterinary technician and understand farming and keeping chickens. This new setup at Tractor Supply is inhumane.”
What Can I Do?
- Sign and share our Change.org petition to Tractor Supply, which includes direct contact information for the company CEO Hal Lawton. Sign & Share.
- Contact Mr. Lawton and tell him what you saw at your local store. Tell him the situation is inhumane and that you will not shop at Tractor Supply until it is rectified.
- Speak to the local store manager and urge that the store provide proper bedding, sheltered resting areas and other comforts for these suffering chicks.
- Post a comment. Each Tractor Supply store appears to have its own local Facebook page where it is advertising baby chicks for sale.
- Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper(s) about this inhumane situation.
- Alert your local humane society and urge them to intervene with the local Tractor Supply to help these chicks.
Tractor Supply and other farm supply stores are notoriously neglectful and indifferent toward the chicks and ducklings they display and sell each spring in thousands of local stores. This new way of keeping these baby birds, in stacked drawers on wire mesh, exceeds even the traditional inhumaneness. In addition, these stores are teaching customers by their example that such inhumane treatment is acceptable, thus encouraging buyers to imitate the abuse.
Thank you for taking action.
United Poultry Concerns