Visualizing the number of factory-farmed chickens in the United States
There are about 1.6 billion chickens alive in factory farm conditions in the US at any one time. 1.2 billion are broiler (meat) chickens and 400 million are egg-laying chickens.
The 1.2 billion broiler chickens collectively live on about 32 square miles of land, which is about as much space as the blue circle.
1.6 billion birds is extremely hard to visualize. I couldn't find a visualization of 1.6 billion dots online, so I made one below. If you zoom in on the image below you can clearly see each dot. There's a percentage tracker on the top left to show you what proportion of the 1.6 billion dots you've scrolled through. For more info on the life of a chicken represented by each dot you can read this page.Â