The topic here is about animals who are fed excessive quantities of antibiotics while healthy, fattening them up to the point that their skeletons frequently fracture because they can't bear the weight. These are not well-treated "happy hens". They are chickens crammed by the tens of thousands into barns with about as much square footage as it has birds. Sometimes less. The unroofed "free range" they get access to may amortize out to a couple square inches per bird, in a portion of the facility they'll never reach due to bird traffic.
It is of no solace to any of the 40 billion individual chickens presently in factory farms that some others may be raised in a coup in a backyard of someone's hypothetical uncle's house. And the hypothetical existence of said uncle has no relevance to the act of paying others to abuse birds in farms, which is where every single person reading this is getting either the vast majority or all of their bird flesh.
To be clear, I find the conditions you're describing to be abhorrent and an unacceptable norm, and I've argued elsewhere in this thread to that end.
But real free-range farms actually exist, and are not someone's "hypothetical uncle's house". The products of these farms are available in stores, and purchasing them does not contribute to the abuse of animals in factory farms.
To claim otherwise cannot be justified by an examination of facts/reality, and is to claim that I didn't eat dinner last Thursday. This is not to say that sourcing food this way is easy, and it's certainly not cheap.
> the act of paying others to abuse birds in farms, which is where every single person reading this is getting either the vast majority or all of their bird flesh.
The point with all of this is that there is a nuanced conversation to be had. Oversimplified binary reductions do not represent reality nor are they a useful point from which to have a conversation about how to improve the status quo. Issuing blanket statements like the one quoted above can only create a wedge between your position and those who you'd arguably like to reach with it. I happen to agree with you re: the horrors of unhappy hens, but you're also directly contradicting my lived experience.
It is of no solace to any of the 40 billion individual chickens presently in factory farms that some others may be raised in a coup in a backyard of someone's hypothetical uncle's house. And the hypothetical existence of said uncle has no relevance to the act of paying others to abuse birds in farms, which is where every single person reading this is getting either the vast majority or all of their bird flesh.