HELLO, CHICKEN!

This photo is of Oreo, the chicken I sponsor at Catskill Animal Sanctuary.



Chickens are very social animals. According to Rex Bowlby, the author of PLANT ROOTS, adult chickens can recognize and remember about 100 other chickens, based mainly on features of the head and neck. Chickens keep themselves very clean by giving themselves dust baths (it's actually clean soil they use, not dust), and it's been found that some chickens enjoy watching television and listening to music. When chickens and roosters flirt, they dance around each other in a way that resembles waltzing.

Here's an excerpt from a sweet book called MY FINE FEATHERED FRIEND by NY Times food critic Williams Grimes, who was surprised one day to find a chicken in his New York City back yard:

" I ran across a funny article by a man who had grown up on a farm in western New York in the 1850s, tending to a flock of a hundred chickens, which he and his brother would observe, hour after hour. Chickens were in a way their television. Every one of those hundred chickens had a name and a distinct character, it seems. They possessed all the human emotions and character traits, in somewhat simplified form. They could be vain, sneaky, and courageous. They could be embarassed. they schemed and plotted, especially about food. A hen that managed to catch a mouse (this talent was news to me) would saunter off to a remote location with her prize. On the way, she would make a point of giving off noises that signaled to the rest of the flock that nothing special was going on. Once out of sight, she would feast greedily."

Here's another excerpt from an amazing book, THE PIG WHO SANG TO THE MOON-THE EMOTIONAL WORLD OF FARM ANIMALS by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson:

"A chicken flew into my arms. I didn't even know that chickens could fly, and suddenly one was landing on me. It happened when I was visiting a farm sanctuary. If I had been younger I would have asked my parents if I could take her home, please! After all, she chose me. Never mind that she chose everybody; she was a particularly friendly chicken. She made soft, strange cooing sounds and nestled into my arms like a happy kitten. I was won over. This was no ordinary chicken, I decided.
In fact, she was an ordinary chicken, but simply one who had no reason to believe that people were after her.
In the wild, both hen and cock elude their enemies, form intense friendships, protect their brood, and greet the golden dawn with a burst of song. This is how chickens and roosters were meant to live."

So, what is life like for a typical US chicken?

90% of American chickens are raised on factory farms, which house up to 80,000 chickens. The chickens we eat ("boilers"), which have natural lifespans of 13-14 years, are killed at 2 months old, and the chickens who lay eggs ("layers") are killed at 2 years old.

The boilers live in groups of 4-5 in tiny metal cages, so small that they can't stand up all the way or turn around, and some of them die of asphyxiation. Their beaks, which are full of nerve endings, are systematically partially removed without anesthesia, since the stress of being in such cramped conditions leads them to peck desperately at each other. Once the beak is half gone, it's harder for chickens to eat, so some of them starve. Decomposing corpses are often found in cages, mixed in with live chickens. The feet of factory farmed chickens get mangled by the wire bottoms of the cages. In fact, because they can't move around in the cages, sometimes their toes grow around the wire bottoms and have to be cut off in order to free them. When chickens are rescued from factory farms, many are crippled for life.

The chickens that lay eggs, called layers, also live in very close quarters, and their beaks are removed, too. Sometimes layers are deprived of food or protein for long periods of time to induce more laying cycles.

Because chickens are squeezed into such close quarters, they often end up eating their own feces, which accumulate and drop down to the cages below. More than 99% of broilers have E.coli and about 30% have salmonella.

Here's what Howard Lyman wrote in his remarkable book, MAD COWBOY-PLAIN TRUTH FROM THE CATTLE RANCHER WHO WON'T EAT MEAT:

"According to the independent Government Accountability Project, up to 25 percent of chickens on the inspection line are covered with feces, bile, and feed, and chickens are often soaked in chlorine baths to remove slime and odor. Contaminated chicken kills at least one thousand Americans a year, and estimates of how many people are sickened range as high as 80 million."

Peter Cheeke, PhD and author of a textbook called CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN ANIMAL AGRICULTURE, wrote:

" In my opinion, if most urban meat eaters were to visit an industrial broiler house, to see how the birds are raised, and could see the birds being 'harvested' and then being 'processed' in a poultry processing plant, some, perhaps many of them, would swear off eating chicken."

Here's a website with more information about factory farm cruelty: www.wegmanscruelty.com