Karen Davis, PhD, United Poultry
Concerns
December 2013
This essay grew out of the Minds of Animals
Conference, August 12-13, 2008, University of Toronto, Ontario.
Chickens released from a long siege in a cage and placed on the ground
almost invariably start making the tentative, increasingly vigorous gestures
of taking a dustbath. They paddle and fling the dirt with their claws, rake
in particles of earth with their beaks, fluff up their feathers, roll on
their sides, pause from time to time with their eyes closed, and stretch out
their legs in obvious relish at being able to bask luxuriously and satisfy
their urge to clean themselves and to be clean.
Early on as I began forming our sanctuary and organization in the 1980s, I
drove one day from Maryland to New York to pick up seven former
battery-caged hens. Instead of crating them in the car, I allowed them to
sit together in the back seat on towels, so they wouldn’t be cramped yet
again in a dark enclosure, unable to see out the windows or to see me. Also,
I wanted to watch them through my rearview mirror and talk to them. Once
their flutter of anxiety and fear had subsided, the hens sat quietly in the
car, occasionally standing up to stretch a leg or a wing, all the while
peering out from under their pale and pendulous combs (the bright red crest
on top of chickens’ heads grows abnormally long, flaccid and yellowish-white
in the cage environment) as I drove and spoke to them of the life awaiting.
Then an astonishing thing happened. The most naked and pitiful looking hen
began making her way slowly from the back seat, across the passenger seat
separator, toward me. She crawled onto my knee and settled herself in my lap
for the remainder of the trip.
I looked at the Chicken endlessly, and I wondered.
What lay behind the veil of animal secrecy?
-William Grimes,
My Fine Feathered Friend
Photo by Washington Post
In this essay, I discuss the social life of chickens and the mental
states that I believe they have and need in order to participate in the
social relationships that I have observed in them. What follows is a
personalized, candid discussion of what I know, what I think I know, and
what I am unsure of but have observed relevant to the minds of chickens in
their relationships with each other and with other species and with me.
Chickens evolved in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains and the
tropical forests of Southeast Asia where they have lived and raised their
families for thousands of years. Most people I talk to had no idea that
chickens are natives of a rugged, forested habitat filled with vibrant
tropical colors and sounds. Similarly surprising to many is the fact that
chickens are endowed with memory and emotions, and that they have a keenly
developed consciousness of one another and of their surroundings.
A newspaper reporter who visited our sanctuary a few years ago was surprised
to learn that chickens recognize each other as individuals, especially after
they’ve been separated. A friend and I had recently rescued a hen and a
rooster in a patch of woods alongside a road in rural Virginia on the
Eastern Shore. The first night we managed to get the hen out of the tree,
but the rooster got away. The following night after hours of playing hide
and seek with him in the rain, we succeeded in netting the rooster, and the
two were reunited at our sanctuary. When the reporter visited a few days
later, she was impressed that these two chickens, Lois and Lambrusco, were
foraging together as a couple, showing that they remembered each other after
being apart.
Chickens form memories that influence their social behavior from the time
they are embryos, and they update their memories over the course of their
lives. I’ve observed their memories in action at our sanctuary. For
instance, if I have to remove a hen from the flock for two or three weeks in
order to treat an infection, when I put her outside again, she moves easily
back into the flock, which accepts her as if she had never been away. There
may be a little showdown, a tiff instigated by another hen, but the
challenge is quickly resolved. Best of all, I’ve watched many a returning
hen be greeted by her own flock members led by the rooster walking over and
gathering around her conversably, as if they were saying to her, “Where have
you been?” and “How are you?” and “We’re glad you’re back.”
My Experience with Mother Hens and Their Families
What of the hens whom we observe each day at home, with what care and
assiduity they govern and guard their chicks? Some let down their wings for
the chicks to come under; others arch their backs for them to climb upon;
there is no part of their bodies with which they do not wish to cherish
their chicks if they can, nor do they do this without a joy and alacrity
which they seem to exhibit by the sound of their voices.
- Plutarch
The purpose of our sanctuary on the Virginia Eastern Shore is to provide a
home for chickens who already exist, rather than adding to the population
and thus diminishing our capacity to adopt more birds. For this reason we do
not allow our hens to hatch their eggs in the spring and early summer as
they would otherwise do, given their association with the roosters in our
yard. All of our birds have been adopted from situations of abandonment or
abuse, or else they were no longer wanted or able to be cared for by their
previous owners. Our two-acre sanctuary is a fenced open yard that shades
into tangled wooded areas filled with trees, bushes, vines, undergrowth and
the soil chickens love to scratch in all year round. It also includes
several smaller fenced enclosures with chicken-wire roofs, each with its own
predator-proof house, for chickens who are inclined to fly over fences
during chick-hatching season, and thus be vulnerable to the raccoons, foxes,
owls, possums and other predators inhabiting the woods and fields around us.
I learned the hard way about the vulnerability of chickens to predators.
Once, a hen named Eva, who had jumped the fence and been missing for several
weeks, reappeared in early June with a brood of eight fluffy chicks. This
gave me a chance to observe directly some of the maternal behavior I had
read so much about. We had adopted Eva into our sanctuary along with several
other hens and a rooster confiscated during a cockfighting raid in Alabama.
Watching Eva travel around the yard, outside the sanctuary fence with her
tiny brood close behind her, was like watching a family of wild birds whose
dark and golden feathers blended perfectly with the woods and foliage they
melted in and out of during the day. Periodically, at the edge of the woods,
Eva would squat down with her feathers puffed out, and her peeping chicks
would all run under her wings for comfort and warmth. A few minutes later,
the family was on the move again.
Throughout history, hens have been praised for their ability to defend their
young from an attacker. I watched Eva do exactly this one day when a large
dog wandered in front of the magnolia tree where she and her chicks were
foraging. With her wings outspread and curved menacingly toward the dog, she
rushed at him over and over, cackling loudly, all the while continuing to
push her chicks behind herself with her wings. The dog stood stock still
before the excited mother hen, and soon ambled away, but Eva maintained her
aggressive posture of self-defense, her sharp, repetitive cackle and
attentive lookout for several minutes after he was gone.
Eva’s behavior toward the dog differed radically from her behavior toward
me, demonstrating her ability to distinguish between a likely predator and
someone she perceived as presenting no dire threat to her and her chicks.
She already knew me from the sanctuary yard, and though I had never handled
her apart from lifting her out of the crate she’d arrived in from Alabama
several months earlier, when I started discreetly stalking her and her
family, to get the closest possible view of them, the most she did when she
saw me coming was dissolve with her brood into the woods or disappear under
the magnolia tree. While she didn’t see me as particularly dangerous, she
nevertheless maintained a wary distance that, over time, diminished to where
she increasingly brought her brood right up to the sanctuary fence,
approaching the front steps of our house, and ever closer to me - but not
too close just yet. When she and her chicks were out and about, and I called
to her, “Hey, Eva,” she’d quickly look up at me, poised and alert for
several seconds, before resuming her occupation.
One morning, I looked outside expecting to see the little group in the dewy
grass, but they were not there. Knowing that mother raccoons prowled nightly
looking for food for their own youngsters in the summer, I sadly surmised
they were the likely reason that I never saw my dear Eva and her chicks
again.
Daffodil & Sir Daisy
Photo by Karen Davis
Inside the sanctuary, I broke the no chick-hatching rule just once. Upon
returning from a trip of several days, I discovered that Daffodil, a soft
white hen with a sweet face and quiet manner, was nestled deep in the corner
of her house in a nest she’d pulled together from the straw bedding on the
dirt floor. Seeing there were only two eggs under her, and fearing they
might contain embryos mature enough to have well-developed nervous systems
by then, I left her alone. A few weeks later on a warm day in June, I was
scattering fresh straw in the house next to hers, when all of a sudden I
heard the tiniest peeps. Thinking a sparrow was caught inside, I ran to
guide the bird out. But those peeps were not from a sparrow; they arose from
Daffodil’s corner. Adjusting my eyes, I peered down into the dark place
where Daffodil was, and there I beheld the source of the tiny voice - a
little yellow face with dark bright eyes was peeking out of her feathers.
I kneeled down and stared into the face of the chick who looked intently
back at me, before it hid itself, then peeked out again. I looked closely
into Daffodil’s face as well, knowing from experience that making direct eye
contact with chickens is crucial to forming a trusting, friendly
relationship with them. If chickens see people only from the standpoint of
boots and shoes, and people don’t look them in the eye and talk to them, no
bond of friendship will be formed between human and bird.
I’ve seen this difference expressed between hens we’ve adopted into our
sanctuary from an egg production facility, for example, and chickens brought
to us as young birds or as someone’s former pet. Former egg-industry hens
tend to look back at me, not with that sharp, bright, direct focus of a
fully confident chicken, but with a watchful opacity that no doubt in part
reflects their having spent their entire previous lives in cages or on
crowded floors in dark, polluted buildings that permanently affected their
eyes before coming to our sanctuary. Psychologically, it’s as if they’ve
pulled down a little curtain between themselves and human beings that does
not prevent friendship but infuses their recovery with a settled strain of
fear. I’ll say more about these hens presently.
From the very first, a large red rooster named Francis regularly visited
Daffodil and her chick in their nesting place, and Daffodil acted happy and
content to have him there. Frequently, I found him quietly sitting with her
and the little chick, who scrambled around both of them, in and out of their
feathers. Though roosters will mate with more than one hen in the flock, a
rooster and a hen will also form bonds so strong that they will refuse to
mate with anyone else. Could it be that Francis was the father of this chick
and that he and Daffodil knew it? He certainly was uniquely and intimately
involved with the pair, and it wasn’t as though he was the head of the
flock, the one who oversaw all of the hens and the other roosters and was
thus fulfilling his duty in that role. Rather, Francis seemed simply to be a
member of this particular family. For the rest of the summer, Daffodil and
her chick formed a kind of enchanted circle with an inviolable space all
around themselves, as they roamed together in the yard, undisturbed by the
other chickens. Not once did I see Francis or any of the other roosters try
to mate with Daffodil during the time she was raising her frisky chick - the
little one I named Daisy who grew up to be Sir Daisy, a large, handsome
rooster with white and golden-brown feathers.
My Relationship with the Hens in Our Sanctuary
The industry must convey the message that hens
are distinct from companion species to defuse the misperceptions.
- Simon Shane, Editor, Egg Industry
The poultry industry represents chickens bred for food as mentally vacuous,
eviscerated organisms. Hens bred for commercial egg production are said to
be suited to a caged environment, with no need for personal space or normal
foraging and social activity. They are characterized as aggressive cannibals
who, notwithstanding their otherwise mindless passivity and affinity for
cages, cannot live together in a cage without first having a portion of
their sensitive beaks burned off - otherwise, it is said, they will tear
each other up. Similarly, the instinct to tend and fuss over her eggs and be
a mother has been rooted out of these hens (so it is claimed), and the idea
of one’s having a social relationship with such hens is dismissed as silly
sentimentalism. I confess I have yet to meet a single example of these
so-called cannibalistic cage-loving birds.
Over the years, we have adopted hundreds of “egg-type” hens into our
sanctuary straight from the cage environment, which is all they ever knew
until they were rescued and placed gently on the ground where they felt the
earth next to their bodies for the first time in their lives. To watch a
little group of nearly featherless hens with naked necks and mutilated beaks
respond to this experience is deeply moving. Because their bones have never
been properly exercised and their toenails are long and spindly for never
having scratched vigorously in the ground, some hens take a few days or
longer learning to walk normally and fly up to a perch and settle on it
securely, but their desire to do these things is evident from the time they
arrive.
Chickens released from a long siege in a cage and placed on the ground
almost invariably start making the tentative, increasingly vigorous gestures
of taking a dustbath. They paddle and fling the dirt with their claws, rake
in particles of earth with their beaks, fluff up their feathers, roll on
their sides, pause from time to time with their eyes closed, and stretch out
their legs in obvious relish at being able to bask luxuriously and satisfy
their urge to clean themselves and to be clean.
Carefully lifting a battered hen, who has never known anything before but
brutal handling, out of a transport carrier and placing her on the ground to
begin taking her first real dustbath (as opposed to the “vacuum” dustbaths
hens try to perform in a cage) is a gesture from which a trusting
relationship between human and bird grows. If hens were flowers, it would be
like watching a flower unfold, or in the case of a little flock of hens set
carefully on the ground together, a little field of flowers transforming
themselves from withered stalks into blossoms. For chickens, dustbathing is
not only a cleansing activity; it is also a social gathering. Typically, one
hen begins the process and is quickly joined by other hens and maybe one or
two roosters. Soon the birds are buried so deep in their dustbowls that only
the moving tail of a rooster or an outspread wing can be seen a few feet
away. Eventually, one by one, the little flock emerges from their ritual
entrancement all refreshed. Each bird stands up, vigorously shakes the dirt
particles out of his or her feathers, creating a fierce little dust storm
before running off to the next engaging activity.
Charity (front) with Freddaflower & Zelda dustbathing
Early on as I began forming our sanctuary and organization in the 1980s,
I drove one day from Maryland to New York to pick up seven former
battery-caged hens. Instead of crating them in the car, I allowed them to
sit together in the back seat on towels, so they wouldn’t be cramped yet
again in a dark enclosure, unable to see out the windows or to see me. Also,
I wanted to watch them through my rearview mirror and talk to them.
Once their flutter of anxiety and fear had subsided, the hens sat quietly in
the car, occasionally standing up to stretch a leg or a wing, all the while
peering out from under their pale and pendulous combs (the bright red crest
on top of chickens’ heads grows abnormally long, flaccid and yellowish-white
in the cage environment) as I drove and spoke to them of the life awaiting.
Then an astonishing thing happened. The most naked and pitiful looking hen
began making her way slowly from the back seat, across the passenger seat
separator, toward me. She crawled onto my knee and settled herself in my lap
for the remainder of the trip.
The question has been asked whether chickens can form intentions. Do they
have “intentionality”? Do they consciously formulate purposes and carry them
out? In the rearview mirror I watched Bonnie, that ravaged little hen, make
a difficult yet beeline trip from the backseat of the car into my lap.
Reliving the scene in my mind, I see her journey as her intention to reach
me. Once she obtained her objective, she rested without further incident.
Intentionality in chickens is shown in many ways. An example is a hen’s
desire not only to lay an egg, but to lay her egg in a particular place with
a particular group of hens, or in a secluded spot she has chosen - and she
has definitely chosen it. I’ve watched hens delay laying their egg until
they got where they wanted to be. Conscious or not at the outset, once the
intention has been formed, the hen is consciously and emotionally committed
to accomplishing it. No other interpretation of her behavior makes sense by
comparison. Sarah, for example, a white leghorn hen from a battery-cage
egg-laying operation who came to our sanctuary with osteoporosis and a
broken leg, was determined, as she grew stronger, to climb the front stairs
of our house, one laborious step at a time, just so that she could lay her
egg behind the toilet in the bathroom next to the second floor landing. This
was a hen, remember, who had never known anything before in her life but a
crowded metal cage among thousands of cages in a windowless building. I was
Sarah’s friendly facilitator. I cheered her on, and the interest I showed in
her and her wishes and successes was a critical part of her recovery, both
physical and mental.
These days in the morning when I unhook the door of the little house in
which eight hens and Sir Valery Valentine the rooster spend the night, brown
Josephine runs alongside me and dashes ahead down to the Big House where she
waits in a state of eager anticipation while I unlatch the door to let the
birds who are eagerly assembled on the other side of that door out into the
yard. Out they rush, and in goes Josephine, straight to the favorite spot
shaped by herself and her friends into a comfy nest atop three stacked bales
of straw that, envisioned in her mind’s eye, she was determined to get to.
Why else, unless she remembered the place and her experience in it with
anticipatory pleasure, would she be determined day after day to repeat the
episode?
Miss Sentinel Soul & Sir Valery Valentine
Photo by: Davida G. Breier
In her mind’s eye as well is my own role in her morning ritual. I hold
the Keys to the little straw Kingdom Josephine is eager to reenter, and she
accompanies me trustingly and expectantly as we make our way toward it.
Likewise, our hen Charity knew that I held the keys to the cellar where she
laid her eggs for years in a pile of books in a cabinet beside a table I
worked at. Unlike Josephine, Charity wanted to lay her egg in a private
place, free of the fussing of hens gathered together and sharing their nest,
often accompanied by a rooster boisterously crowing the egg-laying news amid
the cacophony of cackles. Charity didn’t mind my presence in the cellar. She
seemed to like me sitting there, each of us intent on our silent endeavor.
If the cellar door was closed, blocking her way to the basement when she was
ready to lay her egg, she would pace back and forth in front of the window
on the opposite side of the house where I sat at my desk facing the window.
If I didn’t respond quickly enough, she’d start pecking at the window with
an increasing bang to get me to move. By the time I ran up the steps and
opened the cellar door, she’d already be standing there, having raced around
the house as soon as she saw me get up. Down the cellar steps she’d trip,
jump into the cabinet, and settle as still as a statue in her book nook.
After she had laid her egg and spent a little time with it, she let me know
she was ready to go back outside, running up the steps to the landing where
she waited until I opened the door, and out she went.
Do events like these suggest that the chickens regard me as a chicken like
themselves? I don’t really think so, other than perhaps when they are
motherless chicks and I am their sole provider and protector, similar to the
way children raised by wolves imprint on and behave like wolves. I see the
ability of chickens to bond with me and be endearingly companionable as an
extension of their ability to adapt their native instincts to habitats and
human-created environments that stimulate their natural ability to perceive
analogies and fit what they find where they happen to be to the fulfillment
of their own needs and desires.
The inherently social nature of chickens enables them to socialize
successfully with a variety of other species and to form bonds of
interspecies affection. Having adopted into our sanctuary many incapacitated
young chickens from the “broiler” chicken (meat) industry, I know how
quickly they learn to recognize me and my voice and their own names. They
twitter and chirp when I talk to them, and they turn their heads to watch me
moving about or away from them. Living in the house until they are well
enough to go outside if they ever can, they quickly learn the cues I provide
that signify their comfort and care and establish their personal identity.
This is not to suggest that chickens are unlimitedly malleable. Mother hens
and their embryos have a genetic repertoire of communications that are too
subtle for humans to decipher entirely, let alone imitate. Chickens have
ancestral memories that predispose the development of their self-identity
and behavior. Even chickens incubated in mechanical hatcheries and deprived
of parental influence - virtually all of the birds at our sanctuary - behave
like chickens in essential ways. For instance, they all follow the sun
around the yard. They all sunbathe, dropping to the ground and lying on
their sides with one wing outspread, then turning over and spreading out the
other wing while raising their neck feathers to allow the warm sunlight and
vitamin D to penetrate their skin. Similar to dustbathing, sunbathing is a
social as well as a healthful activity for chickens, where you see one bird
drop to the ground where the sun is shining, followed by another and then
another, and if you don’t know what they are doing, you will think they had
died the way they lie still with their eyes closed, flopped like mops under
the sun.
I’m aware when I am in the yard with them that the chickens are constantly
sending, receiving and responding to many signals that elude me. They also
exhibit a clear sense of distinction between themselves, as chickens, and
the three ducks, two turkeys and peacock Frankencense who share their
sanctuary space. And they definitely know the difference between themselves
and their predators, such as foxes and hawks, whose proximity raises a
sustained alarm through the entire flock. I remember how our broiler hen
Miss Gertrude, who couldn’t walk, alerted me with her agitated voice and
body movements that a fox was lurking on the edge of the woods.
Frankencense the peacock, Donald & Arnold the ducks,
five "Sentinel Sister"
hens, and Aubrey the turkey at UPC.
Photo by: Davida G. Breier
While all of our sanctuary birds mingle together amiably, typically the
ducks potter about as a trio, and Frankencense the peacock displays his
plumage before the hens, who view him for the most part impassively. The
closest interspecies relationship I’ve observed among our birds is between
the chickens and the turkeys.
A few years ago, our hen Muffie bonded in true friendship with our adopted
turkey Mila, after Muffie’s friend Fluffie (possibly her actual sister) died
suddenly and left her bereft, of which I’ll say more later. Right from the
start, Muffie and Mila shared a quiet affection, foraging together and
sometimes preening each other very delicately. One of their favorite rituals
was in the evenings when I changed their water and ran the hose in their
bowls. Together, Muffie and Mila would follow the tiny rivulets along the
ground, drinking as they went, Muffie darting and drinking like a brisk
brown fairy, Mila dreamily swaying and sipping, piping her intermittent
flute notes.
Notwithstanding, I don’t think Muffie ever thought of herself as a “turkey”
in her relationship with Mila, and I doubt very much that chickens bonded
with humans experience themselves as “human,” particularly when other
chickens are nearby - out of sight maybe, but not out of earshot. (Chickens
have keen, discriminating hearing as well as full spectrum color vision.
Chick embryos have been shown to distinguish the crow of a rooster from
other sounds from inside their shells.)
Chickens in my experience have a core identity and sense of themselves as
chickens. An example is a chick I named Fred, sole survivor of a classroom
hatching project in which embryos were mechanically incubated. Fred was so
large, loud and demanding from the moment he set foot in our kitchen, I
assumed he’d grow up to be a rooster. He raced up and down the hallway,
hopped up on my shoulder, leapt to the top of my head, ran across my back,
down my arm and onto the floor when I was at the computer, and was generally
what you’d call “pushy,” but adorably so. I remember one day putting Fred
outdoors in an enclosure with a few adult hens on the ground, and he flew
straight up the tree to a branch, peeping loudly, apparently wanting no part
of them.
“Fred” grew into a lustrously beautiful black hen whom I renamed
Freddaflower. Often we’d sit on the sofa together at night while I watched
television or read. Even by herself, Freddaflower liked to perch on the arm
of the sofa in front of the TV when it was on, suggesting she liked to be
there because it was our special place. She ran up and down the stairs to
the second floor as she pleased, and often I would find her in the guestroom
standing prettily in front of the full-length mirror preening her feathers
and observing herself. She appeared to be fully aware that it was she
herself she was looking at in the mirror. I’d say to her, “Look,
Freddaflower - that’s you! Look how pretty you are!” And she seemed already
to know that.
Freddaflower loved for me to hold her and pet her. She demanded to be picked
up. She would close her eyes and purr while I stroked her feathers and
kissed her face. From time to time, I placed her outside in the chicken
yard, and sometimes she ventured out on her own, but she always came back.
Eventually I noticed she was returning to me less and less, and for shorter
periods. One night she elected to remain in the chicken house with the
flock. From then on until she died of ovarian cancer in my arms two years
later, Freddaflower expressed her ambivalence of wanting to be with me but
also wanting to be with the other hens, to socialize and nest with them and
participate in their world and the reliving of ancestral experiences that
she carried within herself.
Liqin Cao and Freddaflower
Photo by Franklin Wade
My Relationship with the Roosters in Our Sanctuary
A less happy ambivalence appeared in a soft-colored gray and white rooster I
named Ruby when he was brought to our sanctuary as a young bird by a girl
who swore he was a hen. Following me about the house on his brisk little
legs, even sleeping beside me on my pillow at night, Ruby grew up to be a
rooster. In spite of our close relationship during his first months of life,
once he became sexually mature, Ruby’s attitude toward me changed. In the
yard with the other chickens, he showed no disposition to fight. He didn’t
attack other birds or provoke antagonisms. He fit in with the existing flock
of hens and roosters, but toward me and other people he became compulsively
aggressive. As soon as I (or anyone) appeared in the yard, Ruby ran from
wherever he was and physically attacked us. Having to work in the yard under
his vigilant eye, I took to carrying a bottomless birdcage and placing it
over him while I worked. When finished I would lift it off him and walk
backward toward the gate with the birdcage in front of me as a shield.
What I saw taking place in Ruby was a conflict he couldn’t control, and from
which he suffered emotionally, between an autonomous genetic impulse on the
one hand, and his personal desire on the other to be friendly with me. He
got to where when he saw me coming with the birdcage, he would walk right up
and let me place it over him as if grateful for my protection against a
behavior he didn’t want to carry out. Even more tellingly, he developed a
syndrome of coughs and sneezes whenever I approached, symptomatic, I
believed, of his inner turmoil. He didn’t have a respiratory infection, and
despite his antagonism toward me, I never felt that he hated me but rather
that he suffered from his dilemma, including his inability to manage it.
My personal experience with our sanctuary roosters confirms the literature
I’ve read about wild and feral chickens documenting that the majority of
roosters do not physically and compulsively attack one another. Chickens
maintain a social order in which every member of the flock has a place and
finds a place. During the day our roosters and hens break up into small,
fluctuating groups that are somewhat, but by no means, rigidly territorial.
Antagonisms between roosters are resolved with bloodless showdowns and
face-offs. The most notable exception is when a new rooster is introduced
into an existing flock, which may provoke a temporary flare up, but even
then, there is no predicting.
Last year I placed newcomer Benjamin in a yard already occupied by two other
roosters, Rhubarb and Oliver and their twenty or so hens, and he fit in
right away. Ruby won immediate acceptance when I put him outside in the
chickenyard after living in the house with me for almost six months. In
dealing with Ruby I found an unexpected ally in our large red rooster Pola,
who was so attentive to me, all I had to do was call him, and he bolted over
from his hens and let me pick him up and hold him. I have a greeting card
photograph of Pola and me “crowing” together, my one hand clasped over his
swelled-out chest, my other hand holding his claw, in a duet I captioned
“With Heart and Voice.”
Playfully, I got into the habit of yelling “Pola, Help!” whenever Ruby acted
like he was ready to come after me, which worked as well as the birdcage.
Hearing my call, Pola would perk up, race over to where Ruby was about to
charge, and run him off with such cheerful alacrity it was as if he knew
this was our little game together. I’d always say, “Thank you, Pola, thank
you!” and he acted very pleased with his performance and the praise I
lavished on him for “saving” me. He stuck out his chest, stretched up his
neck, flapped his wings vigorously, and crowed triumphantly a few times.
Karen Davis & Pola
Photo by: Linda Spillers, Gazette Newspapers
Roosters crow to announce their accomplishments. Even after losing a
skirmish, a rooster will often crow as if to compensate for his loss or deny
its importance or call it a draw. Last summer as I sat reading outside with
the chickens, I was diverted by our two head roosters, Rhubarb and Sir
Valery Valentine, crowing back and forth at each other in their respective
yards just a few feet apart. It looked like Sir Valery was intentionally
crossing a little too far into Rhubarb’s territory, and Rhubarb kept dashing
at him to reinforce the boundary. There was not a hint of hostility between
them; rather the contest, I decided as I watched them go at it, was being
carried out as a kind of spirited mock ritual, in which each rooster rushed
at the other, only to halt abruptly on his own side of the invisible buffer
zone they apparently had agreed upon. At that point, each rooster paced up
and down on his own side, steadily eyeing the other bird and crowing at him
across the divide. After ten minutes or so, they each backed off and were
soon engrossed in other activities.
Roosters are so energetic and solicitous toward their hens, so intensely
focused on every aspect of their social life together that one of the
saddest things to see is a rooster in a state of decline due to age, illness
or both. An aging or ailing rooster who can no longer hold his own in the
flock suffers severely. He droops, and I have even heard a rooster cry over
his loss of place and prestige within his flock. This is what happened to
our rooster Jules - “Gentleman Jules,” as my husband fondly named him - who
came to our sanctuary in the following way.
One day I received a phone call from the resident of an apartment building
outside Washington, DC, saying that a rooster was loose in the complex and
was being chased by children who were throwing stones at him. After two
weeks of trying, she managed to lure the rooster into the laundry room and
called me to come get him. Expecting to find a cowering and emaciated
creature needing to be carefully lifted out of a corner, I discovered
instead a bright-eyed perky, chatty little fellow with glossy black feathers
like Freddaflower. I drove him to our sanctuary and set him outside with the
flock, which at the time included our large white broiler rooster Henry, and
our feisty bantam rooster, Bantu, who loved nothing better than sitting in
the breeze under the trees with his two favorite large brown hens, Nadia and
Nadine.
Jules was a sweet-natured rooster, warm and affectionate to the core. He was
a natural leader, and the hens loved him. Our dusky brown hen Petal, whom
we’d adopted from another sanctuary, was especially devoted to Jules. Petal
had curled gnarly toes, which didn’t stop her from whisking away from anyone
she didn’t want to come near her; otherwise she sat still watching
everything, especially Jules. Petal never made a sound; she didn’t cluck
like most hens - except when Jules left her side a little too long. Then all
of a sudden, the silent and immobile hen with the watchful eye let out a
raucous SQUAWK, SQUAWK, SQUAWK, that didn’t stop until Jules had lifted his
head up from whatever he was doing, and muttering to himself, ran over to
comfort his friend.
Jules the Rooster
Two years after coming to live with us, Jules developed a respiratory
infection that with treatment seemed to go away, but left him weak and
vulnerable. He returned to the chickenyard only to find himself supplanted
by Glippie, with whom he had used to be cordial, but was now dueling, and he
didn’t have the heart or strength for it. His exuberance ebbed out of him
and he became sad; there is no other word for the total condition of
mournfulness he showed. His voice, which had always been cheerful, changed
to moaning tones of woe. He banished himself to the outer edges of the
chickenyard where he paced up and down, bawling so loudly I could hear him
crying from inside the house. I brought him in with me and sought to comfort
my beloved bird, who showed by his whole demeanor that knew he was dying and
was hurt through and through by what he had become. Jules developed an
abdominal tumor. One morning our veterinarian placed him gently on the floor
of his office after a final and futile overnight stay. Jules looked up at me
from the floor and let out a low groan of “ooooohh” so broken that it
pierced me through. I am pierced by it now, remembering the sorrow expressed
by this dear sweet creature, “Gentleman Jules,” who had loved his life and
his hens and was leaving it all behind.
My Experience of Empathy and Affection in Chickens
I perceive in your literature the proposal that chickens be treated as pets.
I have been involved with many thousands of chickens and turkeys and I don’t
think they are good pets, although it is evident that almost any vertebrate
may be trained to come for food. - Thomas Jukes in a letter to the author,
1992
I have described how our hen Muffie bonded with our turkey Mila after
Muffie’s inseparable companion, Fluffie, died leaving her bereft. Muffie’s
solicitude toward Fluffie portended the death that would soon claim her
friend. Like Jules, Fluffie developed an infection that treatment had seemed
to heal, but she never fully recovered. One day, I looked out the kitchen
window and saw Muffie straddled on top of Fluffie with her wings extended
over her. I called my husband to come take a look at this moving and yet
disturbing scene. We saw it repeated several times over the next few days.
On a late afternoon, I went outside to put Muffie and Fluffie in for the
night but found them already in their house in the straw. Fluffie stood
drooping with her head and tail curved toward the ground and Muffie stood
motionless beside her. I rushed Fluffie to the veterinarian and brought her
home with medicine, but she died that same night in the small bedroom where
she and Muffie had liked to perch on top of the bookcase in front of the big
window overlooking the yard.
Muffie & Fluffie
After Fluffie died, Muffie stood planted for days in the exact spot where
Fluffie had last stood drooping and dying. Now, Muffie drooped in her place.
She no longer scampered into the woods or came bursting into the kitchen to
jump up on the sink and peck holes in the sponge floating on top of the
dishwater. She was not interested in me or the other chickens. Two weeks of
this dejection and I said, “We must get Muffie a new sister.” That is how
Petal, who had loved Jules, came to live in our sanctuary. The minute Petal
appeared, Muffie lost her torpor and became a bustling “police miss,”
picking on Petal and patrolling everything Petal did until finally the two
hens became amiable, but they were never pals.
Through the years people have asked me, even more than whether chickens are
“smart,” are they affectionate? - toward people, they particularly want to
know. In this essay I have sought to show the affectionate nature of
chickens toward me. Because I don’t just feed them but I also talk to them
and look them in the eye and express my feelings for them, the birds at our
sanctuary gather around me and stand there serenely preening themselves or
sit quietly on the ground next to my chair while I read and chat with them.
Henry & Muffie
Chickens represented by the poultry industry as incapable of friendship
with humans have rested in my lap with their eyes closed as peacefully as
sleeping babies, and as I have noted, they quickly learn their names. A
little white hen from the egg industry named Karla became so friendly, all I
had to do was call out “Karla!” and she would break through the other hens
and head straight toward me, knowing she’d be scooped off the ground and
kissed on her sweet face and over her closed eyes. And I can still see
Vicky, our large white hen from a “broiler breeder” operation, whose right
eye had been knocked out, peeking around the corner of her house each time I
shouted, “Vicky, what are you doing in there?” And there was Henry, likewise
from a broiler breeder operation, who came to our sanctuary dirty and angry
after falling out of a truck on the way to a slaughter plant. Lavished with
my attention, Henry, who at first couldn’t bear to be touched, became as
pliant and lovable as a big shaggy dog. I couldn’t resist wrestling him to
the ground with bearish hugs, and his joy at being placed in a garden where
he could eat all the tomatoes he wanted was expressed in groans of ecstasy.
He was like, “Are all these riches of food and affection really for me?”
One of my most poignant memories is of a large black, beautiful hen I named
Mavis. Mavis had been dropped off at a shelter by a man who’d exhibited her
at agricultural fairs. She must have spent her whole life immobilized on the
floor of a cage with a keeper who treated her like an object. During her
first two weeks at our sanctuary, Mavis could not even stand up without
crumbling to the ground, and she was deeply shy and inexpressive. In the
chicken yard she sat alone by the fence and poked around a little by herself
without showing or attracting interest. I saw no sign that she was ever
going to recover from the emotional and sensory deprivation of her previous
life.
Karen Davis & Mavis
During this time, we had three adult broiler hens - Bella Mae, Alice, and
Florence. They were the opposite of Mavis. All I had to do was crouch down
in the yard, and here comes one of my Three Graces, as I called them, Bella
Mae for example, bumping up against me with her ample breast for an embrace.
Immediately, Alice and Florence would hastily plod over on their heavy feet
to participate in the embracement ceremony. Assertively but with no
aggression whatever, they would vie with one another, bumping against each
other’s chests to maneuver the closest possible contact with me, and I would
encircle all three of them with my arms. One day as we were doing this, I
looked up and saw Mavis just a few feet away, staring at us. The next time,
the same thing happened. There was Mavis with her melancholy eyes watching
me hugging the three white hens. And then it struck me - Mavis wants to be
hugged. I withdrew from the hens, walked over and knelt beside Mavis and
pulled her gently toward me. It didn’t take much. She rested against me in a
completeness of comfort that seemed to include her gratitude that her shy
desire had been understood.
In my first years of keeping chickens there were no predators, until a fox
found us, and we built our fences - but only after eleven chickens
disappeared rapidly under our nose. The fox would sneak up in broad
daylight, raising a clamor among the birds. Running out of the house I’d see
no stalker, just sometimes a soul-stabbing bunch of feathers on the ground
in the midst of panic. When our bantam rooster Josie was taken, his
companion Alexandra ran shrieking through the kitchen, jumped up on a table
and could not stop shrieking and was never the same afterward. The fox
killed Pola, our big red rooster who had so gallantly responded to my calls
begging him to “save” me from Ruby. I am sure he was attacked while trying
to protect his hens the day he disappeared, while I sat obliviously at the
computer. It was too much. I sat on the kitchen floor crying and screaming.
At the time, I was caring for Sonja, a big white warm-natured, bouncy hen I
was treating for wounds she’d received before I rescued her. As I sat on the
floor exploding with grief and guilt, Sonja walked over to where I sat
weeping. She nestled her face next to mine and began purring with the
ineffable soft purr that is also a trill in chickens. She comforted me even
as her gesture deepened the heartache I was feeling in that moment about the
painful mystery of Pola and the mystery of all chickens. Did Sonja know why
I was crying? I doubt it, but maybe she did. Did she know that I was
terribly sad and distressed? There is no question in my mind about that. She
responded to my grief with an expression of empathy that I have carried
emotionally in my life ever since.
It is experiences such as this and others I have described in this essay
that have made me a passionate advocate for chickens. I do not seek to
sentimentalize chickens but to characterize them as best I can within the
purview of my own observations and relationships with them. In the 1980s I
wrote an essay about an abandoned
crippled broiler hen named Viva who, more than any other single cause,
led me to found United Poultry Concerns in 1990. It is hard for me to evoke
in words how expressive she was in spite of her handicap and despite the
miserable life she had had before I lifted her out of her misery and brought
her home with me.
My experience with chickens for more than twenty years has shown me that
chickens are conscious and emotional beings with adaptable sociability and a
range of intentions and personalities. If there is one trait above all that
leaps to my mind in thinking about chickens when they are enjoying their
lives and pursuing their own interests, it is cheerfulness. Chickens are
cheerful birds, quite vocally so, and when they are dispirited and
oppressed, their entire being expresses this state of affairs as well. The
fact that chickens become lethargic in continuously barren environments,
instead of proving that they are stupid or impassive by nature, shows how
sensitive these birds are to their surroundings, deprivations and prospects.
Likewise, when chickens are happy, their sense of wellbeing resonates
unmistakably.
Karen Davis, PhD is the president and founder of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl. She’s the editor of UPC’s quarterly magazine Poultry Press and the author of several books including Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry (1996; Revised Edition 2009), More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual and Reality, and The Holocaust and the Henmaid’s Tale: A Case for Comparing Atrocities. All these books are other flyers and handouts are available through the UPC website. Karen maintains a sanctuary for chickens, turkeys and ducks on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.
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