Do factory-farmed Chickens "know" what they are missing?... The type of suffering I am speaking of here is what has been called “unnatural suffering,” that is, suffering that has no basis or counterpart or equivalence in the natural evolution of the species in question.
“This place was one of few that really took away my will to do
anything for a while. The amount of suffering was too overwhelming
for me to grab my camera and do my job. I wasn’t alone in these
feelings: my partner reacted the same way. Maybe this place doesn’t
exist? Maybe it was just a bad dream? We took a moment to collect
ourselves. After a minute, the nightmare was still as real as
before.” – Andrew Skowron,
A story about three tough and resilient laying hens.
"Every time I photograph laying hens on factory farms, especially
those in cage systems, I wonder, what is their level of acceptance
of the environment that we created for them; how strong is their
will to fight, their imposed tolerance for other randomly chosen
members of a group, all of that while living in a tiny cage. This
agreed on, monotonous and dull life is limited by eating and laying
eggs. The series of photographs that are taken in those places are
mostly metal bars, leaned out necks, which are very often
featherless, and eggs, labeled as a product with number 3."
– Andrew Skowron
....
Do chickens in factory-farming operations have any conscious or
sensory awareness of what is missing in their lives on the
factory-farm? If overcrowding, filth, imprisonment, and brutal
handling are all that they have ever known, do they miss having
personal space, cleanliness, fresh air, sunshine, and other elements
they would normally experience outside of their enforced captivity?
Do they know they are suffering?
The type of suffering I am speaking of here is what has been called
“unnatural suffering,” that is, suffering that has no basis or
counterpart or equivalence in the natural evolution of the species
in question.
I raise this question because agribusiness and its proponents like
to portray chickens and other farmed animals as “happy” and
“content” in the squalor, crowding, confinement, and darkness of
their factory-farm environment. They insist that since these
conditions are all that the chickens as individuals have ever known,
they cannot “miss” what they personally never knew. So can chickens
miss what they have never personally experienced? I believe the
answer is an unqualified “Yes,” they most certainly can.
Here are three examples of experiences – positive experiences – of
which chickens are deprived on factory farms: natural colors and
sunlight, natural sounds, and hygiene – the ability to practice and
maintain bodily cleanliness.
Natural colors and sunlight
As for natural colors and sunlight, let us recall that chickens
evolved in the tropical forests of Southeast Asia. This is a world
of vibrant colors and sounds to which they contribute. Chickens have
much better eyesight than human beings have, including long distance
and close-up vision. They have full-spectrum color vision from the
infrared to the ultraviolet. Their ability to perceive infrared
light is what enables them to see the sunrise each morning an hour
before we do. That is why roosters start crowing when for us it is
still dark outside.
So how do chickens, endowed as they are genetically with superb
color vision, experience being deprived of all natural colors and
forced to see only varying shades of brown in their captive
environment? I see, every day at our sanctuary, how avidly chickens
seek sunlight, how they love to sunbathe, how they need to sunbathe.
Is it not utterly cruel to deprive such creatures of color and the
light of the sun? Do we assume that they do not miss these sources
of inborn pleasure and inherited needs?
Natural Sounds
As for natural sounds, the tropical forest, in which chickens
evolved, is alive, day and night, with the voices of the forest
residents in their tree-filled habitats. During the day, chickens
break up into smaller groups of, say, one rooster and several hens
to forage together for food on the forest floor. Living in a dense
forest means that the birds cannot always see each other among the
trees. So they have to be able to hear one another over long
distances. The roosters constantly notify their flock members
vocally of where they are and what is happening. They keep in touch.
Their voices provide comfort to the whole flock by communicating
information through a natural symphony of sounds.
Compare this vibrant, meaningful ruckus of the forest with the dead
silence, cries of distress, yelling of workers, and din of machinery
to which chickens are subjected in the cages and sheds from which
they cannot escape. Not a single note of joy or enthusiasm so
natural to chickens living in a wild or sanctuary environment.
Instead, every sound, every silence, is negative – threatening,
traumatizing, distressful. Can we think for a moment that these
chickens are not aware that what they were born to hear in the world
of nature has been replaced by the sounds and silence of living in
Hell?
Hygiene
Let us finally consider the issue of hygiene – the inborn need
chickens have to keep themselves, their feathers and their skin,
clean and refreshed. Chickens practice bodily hygiene in two main
ways: by preening their feathers with the preen oil from their preen
gland, and by taking frequent dustbaths. They create dustbowls in
the earth, loosening the soil around themselves with their claws and
beaks to distribute the particles of earth through their feathers
and skin. This enables them to remove accumulated preen oil, dander,
and skin irritants. As I have watched many times in our sanctuary,
chickens who had never set foot on the ground before they arrived at
our place – the first thing they do when removed from the carrier is
to slowly and then vigorously start to dustbathe. Chickens do not
have to be taught to dustbathe. So powerful is their instinct to
bathe themselves and be clean that they will pathetically perform
what poultry scientists call “vacuum dustbathing,” even on the wire
floor of a crowded battery cage.
Factory farming strips chickens and all animals thus confined of
every natural source of comfort and joy. Instead, every natural
endowment of theirs is degraded to a source of frustration, pain,
misery and learned helplessness. The environment they are forced to
live in is completely inimical to their wellbeing.
Who Knows and What Do They Know?
Do factory-farmed chickens KNOW that they are miserable? Do they
have an inner awareness of their deprivation, and its opposite? Do
the ancestral memories that reside within each bird remind them at
some level of consciousness of what they are missing?
Years ago I wrote in the first edition of my book Prisoned
Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry
Industry that abused animals do in fact “know” that they are
suffering because knowing is an organic process far deeper than
words and concepts can express. Every bodily cell is a repository of
experiences including memory and expectation as elements of a
particular moment in the life of a particular cell. The look in a
creature’s eyes tells us a whole lot about what he or she “knows.” I
wrote this in response to the agribusiness and related claims that
if animals have never known anything but their particular situation,
be it happy or sad, they cannot know that they are miserable, or
happy. But, for example, our lungs know whether they are breathing
pollution or fresh air. Our bodies, which include our minds, know
the difference.
Farmers and industry spokespersons will often counter opposition by
proclaiming that farmers “know” their animals. However the animals
they claim to “know” are typically known to them only within a
context of enforced subjugation, manipulation, mutilation, and
control. The owners of these animals think, or at least they say,
that there is nothing else to know about the chickens and other
creatures under their control, both physically and rhetorically.
However, they are wrong, and those of us who know these animals
differently have the evidence to prove it.