Chickens

"Chickens may be capable of affection or loyalty or maybe even pride, but if so, they feel these feelings in an ancient and birdlike way, like glassy-eyed visitors from another world."

"Jack, how agrees the devil and thee about thy soul, that thou soldest him on Good Friday last for a cup of Madeira and a cold capon’s leg?"

"A vet’ran, brave, majestic Cock, Who serv’d for hour glass, guard, and clock, Who crow’d the mansion’s first relief, Alike from goblin and from thief; Whose youth escap’d the Christmas skillet, Whose vigour brav’d the Shrovetide billet."

"Our appetite for meat leads to widespread, horrific cruelty to animals—chickens pressed wing-to-wing into filthy sheds and debeaked, for example. ... These chickens never raise families, root in the soil, build nests, or do anything natural. … Animals have feelings, they suffer; they have needs and desires. They were created by God to breathe fresh air, raise their families, peck in the grass, or root in the soil. Todays farms dont let them do anything God designed them to do. Animal scientists attest that farm animals have personalities and interests, that chickens and pigs can be smarter than dogs and cats. I like that even Jesus identified himself as “a mother hen who longs to gather us under her wings.”"

"Alas! my child, where is the Pen That can do justice to the Hen? Like Royalty, she goes her way, Laying foundations every day, Though not for Public Buildings, yet For Custard, Cake and Omelette. Or if too old for such a use They have their fling at some abuse As when to censure Plays Unfit Upon the stage they make a Hit Or at elections seal the Fate Of an Obnoxious Candidate. No wonder, Child, we prize the Hen, Whose Egg is Mightier than the Pen."

"I have looked attentively at chickens raised in this [battery] fashion, and to me they seem to be unhappy and in poor health. Their combs are dull and lifeless except for glaring and unnatural patches of color that appear occasionally ... The battery chickens I have observed seem to lose their minds about the time they would normally be weaned by their mothers and off in the weeds chasing grasshoppers on their own account. Yes, literally, actually, the battery becomes a gallinaceous madhouse. The eyes of these chickens through the bars gleam like those of maniacs. Let your hand get within reach and it receives a dozen vicious peeks—not the love peck or the tentative peek of idle curiosity bestowed by the normal chicken, but a peck that means business, a peck for flesh and blood, for which in their madness they are thirsting."

"Ten thousand years ago it was a rare bird confined to small niches of South Asia. Today billions of chickens live on almost every continent and island, bar Antarctica. The domesticated chicken is probably the most widespread bird in the annals of planet Earth. If you measure success in terms of numbers, chickens, cows and pigs are the most successful animals ever. Alas, domesticated species paid for their unparalleled collective success with unprecedented individual suffering."

"The worst torture to which a battery hen is exposed is the inability to retire somewhere for the laying act. For the person who knows something about animals it is truly heart-rending to watch how a chicken tries again and again to crawl beneath her fellow-cage mates to search there in vain for cover."

"Eggs are generally considered kosher, but what about eggs from chickens who spend their entire lives imprisoned in a cage one cubic foot in size? Food pellets are brought to them on one conveyor belt; their droppings and eggs are taken away on another. The Bible forbids us to torment animals or cause them any unnecessary grief. Raising chickens who can go out sometimes and see the sky or eat a worm or blade of grass is one thing, but manufacturing them in the concentration camp conditions of contemporary "poultry ranches" is quite another."

"When the chicklet crieth in the egg-shell, Thou givest him breath therein, to preserve him alive. When thou hast perfected him That he may pierce the egg, He cometh forth from the egg, To chirp with all his might; He runneth about upon his two feet, When he hath come forth therefrom."

": Thou shalt eat no fantastical porridge, Nor lick the dish where oil was yesterday, Dust, and dead flies to-day; capons, fat capons— : Oh, hearty sound! : Crammd full of itching oysters."

"Then there are those proverbial “bird brains” of the barnyard, chickens, surely the most maligned and abused animal on the face of the earth, and—just as surely—among the brightest, most social birds well find anywhere. ... Chickens not only are capable of learning, they are also capable of teaching one another. It turns out that chickens are not as dumb as popular mythology makes them out to be."