"I hear the universal cock-crowing with surprise and pleasure, as if I never heard it before. What a tough fellow! How native to the earth!” —Henry David Thoreau
Image from
United Poultry Concerns
Chickens are indeed native to the earth. Despite centuries of
domestication—from the tropical forest to the farmyard to the
factory farm—the call of the wild has always been in the chicken’s
heart. Far from being “chicken,” roosters and hens are legendary for
their bravery. In classical times, the bearing of the rooster—the
old British term for “cock,” a word that was considered too sexually
charged for American usage—symbolized military valor: the rooster’s
crest stood for the soldier’s helmet and his spurs stood for the
sword. A chicken will stand up to an adult human being. Our tiny
Bantam rooster, Bantu, would flash out of the bushes and repeatedly
attack our legs, lest we should disturb his beloved hens. (Although
we do not allow our chickens to hatch chicks, in 2018 a hen and a
rooster rescued from a cockfighting operation produced a surprise
family, the hen having camouflaged herself in a wooded area of our
sanctuary.)
An annoyed hen will confront a pesky young rooster with her hackles
raised and run him off. Although chickens will fight fiercely, and
sometimes successfully, with foxes and other predators to protect
their families, with humans, however, this kind of bravery usually
does not win. A woman employed on a chicken “breeder” farm in
Maryland, berated the defenders of chickens for trying to make her
lose her job, and threatening her ability to support herself and her
daughter. For her, the “breeder” hens were “mean” birds who “peck
your arm when you are trying to collect the eggs.” In her defense
for her life and her daughter’s life, she failed to see the
similarity between her motherly protection of her child and the
exploited hen’s courageous effort to protect her own offspring.
In an outdoor chicken flock, similar to the 12,000 square feet,
predator-proof sanctuary my organization United Poultry Concerns has
in rural Virginia, ritual and playful sparring and chasing normally
suffice to maintain peace and resolve disputes among chickens
without bloodshed. Even hens will occasionally have a spat, growling
and jumping at each other with their hackles raised; but in more
than 30 years of keeping chickens, I have never seen a hen fight
turn seriously violent or last for more than a few minutes. Chickens
have a natural instinct for social equilibrium and learn quickly
from each other. An exasperated bird will either move away from the
offender or aim a peck, or a pecking gesture, which sends the
message: “Back off.”
Bloody battles, which usually take place when a new rooster is
introduced into an established flock, are rare, short-lived and
usually affect the comb—the crest on top of a chicken’s head—which,
being packed with blood vessels, can make an injury look worse than
it usually is. It is when chickens are crowded, confined, frustrated
or forced to compete at a feeder that distempered behavior can
erupt. By contrast, chickens allowed to grow up in successive
generations, unconfined in buildings, do not evince a rigid “pecking
order.” Parents oversee their young, and the young contend
playfully, and indulge in many other activities. A flock of
well-acquainted chickens is an amiable social group.
Sometimes chickens run away, however, fleeing from a bully or
hereditary predator on legs designed for the purpose does not
constitute cowardice. At the same time, I’ve learned from painful
experience how a rooster who rushes in to defend his hens from a fox
or a raccoon usually does not survive the encounter.
Though chickens are polygamous, mating with more than one member of
the opposite sex, individual birds are attracted to each other. They
not only “breed”; but they also form bonds, clucking endearments to
one another throughout the day. A rooster does a courtly dance for
his special hens in which he “skitters sideways and opens his wing
feathers downward like Japanese fans,” according to Rick and Gail
Luttmann’s book, Chickens in Your Backyard. A man once told me,
“When I was a young man I worked on a chicken farm, and one of the
most amazing things about those chickens was that they would
actually choose each other and refuse to mate with anyone else.”
Sadly, the eggs of these parent flocks are snatched away and sent to
mechanical incubators, so the parents never see their chicks.
“Breeder” roosters and hens are routinely culled for low fertility,
and also because “if a particular male becomes unable to mate, his
matching females will not accept another male until he is removed,”
explains the book Commercial Chicken Meat and Egg Production.
Little more than a year later, the parents who have survived their
miserable life are sent to slaughter just like the chicks they never
got to see, raise or protect, as they would otherwise have chosen to
do if they were free.
To afford this chance for chickens to live a cage-free life along
with their chicks, we should show compassion to chickens in May in
honor of
International Respect for Chickens Day, which
falls on May 4, 2022. Most of all, we need to respect the lives of
chickens beyond this day by ensuring that chickens are treated
humanely, and by making better food choices, which involves a shift
away from a meat-based diet toward a plant-based diet.
Karen Davis, PhD, is the president and founder of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl including a sanctuary for chickens in Virginia. Davis is an award-winning animal rights activist and the author of numerous books, including a children’s book (A Home for Henny); a cookbook (Instead of Chicken, Instead of Turkey); Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs; More Than a Meal - The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual and Reality; and her latest book, a series of essays called For the Birds: From Exploitation to Liberation.