Two strains of leghorn chickens were used to test a technique for sterilizing the germinal tissue of the claw with microwave energy and the beak tissue with infrared energy for trimming the claw and beak of the birds. Claw sterilizing was carried out on half of the birds while the other half of birds were left intact. Of the claw-sterilized birds, one third of them were beak trimmed at hatch using the infrared technique, one third were precision trimmed at 7 days of age, and the beaks of the remaining third of the birds were left intact. Birds that had been claw-sterilized had a significantly lower body weight, except from weeks 3 to 6, and had a lower feed consumption from week 8 to 18. The birds that were beak-trimmed at hatch had a lower body weight from week 3 to 14 and ate less total feed by the fourth week. Mortality was lower than 2.1 % for all treatments. Using a fearfulness scoring system of 1 to 10, from week 6 to 8, birds with intact claws peaked at 8 to 10 and birds that had been claw-sterilized peaked at 3 to 4. The fearfulness score subsided to 2 to 3 and 6 to 8 for claw-sterilized and non-claw-sterilized birds, respectively, by week 16 to 18. Pullets were able to be grown to sexual maturity on less feed and with a lower level of observed fearfulness using standard husbandry practices when they were beak-trimmed and claw-sterilized at hatch.