PETA not quite wrong.
Actually - a large fraction of chicks are killed at a few days old.
This is as there are two sorts of chickens, those optimised for meat, and those optimised for eggs.

If you try to grow a (male) egg-chicken up for meat, yes, of course you can, but it takes significantly longer, and produces less meat per unit food than a meat chicken.

So, as they don't produce as many eggs, and are inefficient producers of meat, a large fraction of male egg-layer chicks get the chop. (or blender, bulldozer, ...)

For similar reasons, large fractions of male milk-cow calves get killed soon after birth.
(speedevil, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 11:52, Reply)