Absurd as it may sound to anyone familiar with chickens, some people, including one high-profile animal pontificator who shall be nameless, have claimed based on false and unquestioned assertions, that chickens do not mind seeing and hearing other chickens being slaughtered in their presence. This would include seeing one or more members of their flock being tortured by humans or harmed by a natural predator such as a hawk or a fox. In this podcast episode I address the question of traumatic empathy in chickens.
Listen to Thinking Like a Chicken Podcast, March 10, 2023. Transcript below.
Photo of “spent” hens in a poultry slaughter market by
Unparalleled Suffering Photography.
Hello, and thank you for joining me today. I’m Karen Davis, the
founder and president of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit
organization that promotes compassion and respect for chickens,
turkeys, ducks, and other domesticated birds.
Today I want to speak to you about whether chickens are bothered by
seeing other chickens harmed in their presence, including being
killed.
A fellow activist once asked me if I believed chickens don’t mind
watching and hearing other chickens being killed in their presence.
He asked because a farmer had told him they don’t mind. Was this
true?
Lest anyone think that chickens don’t mind hearing and seeing other
chickens die violently in front of them, or be grabbed by a predator
or otherwise traumatized, nothing could be further from the truth.
As a chicken sanctuary director for more than three decades, I’ve
seen the effect on chickens of a hawk or a fox and the terror those
predators inspire in the birds, including the aftermath of trauma.
I learned the hard way back in the early days of keeping a few
rescued chickens in an unfenced yard. (Those naïve days are long
gone, and our 12,000 square-foot sanctuary is now fully
predator-proof.) One of our chickens back then, named Ethel Murmur,
was in the yard one Saturday afternoon, next to the porch with her
friend Bertha, when a fox stole Bertha, and left her dead in the
woods.
Before this happened, Ethel Murmur was so vigorous and loud that we
named her after the famous Broadway singer Ethel Merman on account
of her imposing character, her ample physique, and her big voice.
Afterward, Ethel Murmur was never the same. She stopped making a
joyful noise, she stopped yelling for attention, and could hardly
walk anymore. Her whole body shriveled, and she died a week later.
Although she herself had not been attacked, she had watched the
attack on her friend, and could not recover.
Another situation arose one morning when I put our brown hen,
Alexandra, outside with her bantam rooster companion, Josie. It was
a spring day, and the kitchen door was open. Suddenly, Alexandra ran
shrieking through the door into the house, jumped up on a table, and
could not calm down. I cried, “Alexandra, what happened?” Panic
stricken, I ran outside. Josie was nowhere. Once again – a fox. Once
again, heartache.
As for chickens not minding watching members of their flock being
killed by a farmer, a man once told me how a small flock of chickens
he and some others were keeping on a commune he belonged to at the
time were slaughtered in front of each other by a member of their
group. Three hens and a rooster who were previously friendly with
these people fled the scene. They disappeared for more than two
weeks, before reappearing, timidly, and never again trustingly.
Their behavior following the slaughter was totally altered, the man
sadly said.
In nature, chicken parents will confront a predator by first pushing
their chicks into foliage for safety behind themselves. Puffing out
their feathers and spreading their wings wide, they will charge the
predator while sounding alarm calls. One May day, when a pair of our
hens and roosters produced an unexpected family, the tiny chicks
squeezed through the wire fence to the other side, then peeped
piteously at being stuck there. Shrieking and dashing about, unable
to reach her chicks, the frantic mother hen instinctively flew
straight up into my face when I approached her. (I quickly rescued
all five chicks, and we covered the openings safely.)
When questioning the emotional complexity of farmed animals, we need
to remember that a farmed animal is essentially a natural animal in
captivity. A chicken’s physical environment and bodily deformations,
imposed by exploiters, retain the fundamental instincts,
sensitivities, emotions and intelligence of a bird whose
evolutionary home is the tropical forest. Like their wild cousins of
the tropics, domesticated chickens, perceiving a predator in their
yard, will typically react with a loud clamor, and they will hide
themselves among the trees and bushes for protection.
Chickens in a state of abnormal, chronic fear and severe,
inescapable captivity tend by contrast to become very still and
quiet, evincing what psychologists call learned helplessness – that
is, behavior exhibited by individuals enduring repeated,
traumatizing treatment beyond their control, even if their senses
are on high alert. They may develop a condition of muscular
immobility produced by their intense fear at being helpless, and
knowing they are going to die.
I am confident that chickens are empathic creatures who are capable
of experiencing not only the imminence of their own death, but the
emotional tones of dread and dying in others trapped in a violent
setting such as a slaughterhouse, a live poultry market, or a
cockfighting ring. They sense, in these places, when they themselves
and their companions are in immediate danger, as shown by their
ready response to danger in a diversity of settings.
The day after Josie, our little rooster, was grabbed by a fox in
front of Alexandra our hen, I was filled with grief and guilt. “Why
oh why did I let them outside yesterday morning unprotected?” I
berated myself. I sat on the floor and could not stop crying. Here,
then, came big white billowy Sonia, a hen whom we’d rescued with
Josie and other chickens from a filthy shed in back of a shiny
farmers market in Virginia, here Sonia came across the living room
floor. She rested her head against me and began softly purring, over
and over. My sadness deepened with love for this gentle being, who
maybe knew or did not know why I was crying, but who sensed my
sadness and rose from where she was sitting to plod across the floor
to comfort me in this moment of empathy that we shared, together in
this tragic world.
I hope you have found today’s podcast informative and inspiring on
behalf of chickens and that you will share it with your social media
network. Thank you very much for joining me today, and, please join
me for the next podcast episode of Thinking Like a Chicken – News &
Views! And have a wonderful day.
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s podcast, and that you will share it
with others. Please join me for the next podcast episode of
Thinking Like a Chicken – News & Views. And have a wonderful day.