My kids started calling me chicken-killer after my third flock of chickens was decimated by raccoons. Alas the raccoons were steadfast in their determination to eat my chickens, while I wavered in my attentiveness to their protection.
The raccoons included my hens on their nightly rounds of future meals to terrorize. I'd wake up late at night to the sounds of my hens squawking in desperation. Ten minutes later my neighbors hens would go off like a snooze alarm. The raccoons were creatures of habit – following the same routine every night – always checking out the plumpness of my hens first, my neighbors second.
My job was straight forward - shut the door every night, shortly after sunset.
I lost Henrietta the night I had friends over for dinner. The time I went to the movies without coming home first, the raccoons nailed Charlotte and either Agnes or Desdemona (I could never really tell the two apart.)
I'd wake up to the blood-curdling screams of my dying hens. I'd race out, half-dressed to the hen house. Only to find blood stains and scattered feathers. If I was quick, I might arrive on the scene soon enough to chase the raccoon away from the carcass of a hen he was dragging away.
One or two at a time, my chickens fell to raccoons - whenever I broke my habit of closing them in for the night.
If I kept my hens caged all of the time I wouldn't have this problem. While caged hens lay tasty eggs, all of their weirdness comes out when hens are constantly kept in close quarters. Chickens have a much pleasanter personality when they are allowed to roam free, as nature intended.
Fluffy
I first discovered the charm and beauty of uncaged chickens when I met Fluffy (obviously not named by me). Fluffy was the last of her flock. She belonged next door with my ex, but for some reason that I could never fully fathom, my ex had uncaged her chickens.
I became deeply perturbed when her hens violated the boundaries I had carefully negotiated with my ex. Her unilateral decision to let her chickens roam free became a bone of contention between us.
My secret method for living in close proximity to my ex involves a certain amount niceness (but not too nice), and a certain amount of acting like a jerk (but not to jerky) to remind her how lucky she is to live without me.
I had legitimate complaints. Her feral flock had killed some my prized transplants, shit in my greenhouse and were mocking me behind my back every chance they got.
Late one night I was awaken by a brief but intense ruckus right outside of my house. A desperate squawk was cut short mid-screech. I raced outside in my pj's only to find a few feathers drifting in the breeze, and an impossible quiet. Unlike raccoons who make a bloody mess of their kills coyotes have the decency to make a clean quick kill.
Problem solved. Or so I thought. Until two days later when Fluffy came out of hiding. She had been the smallest, most bossed-around hen of her flock. At an early age they had voted her 'least likely to succeed.' and set out to make sure it happened. But Fluffy had the last laugh when she was the one to survive, and outlive them all.
Blessed with a small memory and perky disposition, Fluffy swiftly recovered from the tragic loss of her fellow flock-mates, and began her new life as a flock-less chicken. Much to my dismay she decided that my house was the safest place to hang out.
It was the hottest part of the summer. My house was a work in progress, and tended to overheat unless I kept my front door wide open. At the time I was working and recreating long hours, and was more or less camping out in my house - which was rustic but cozy.
My house had once been a garage with an attached chicken coop. Perhaps Fluffy sensed the ghosts of chickens past. I can't think of any other reason why Fluffy preferred my house to my ex's, unless the foraging was better.
I chased Fluffy out, and continued bothering my ex, but nothing changed. Not that I disliked Fluffy, I just liked her better outside.
In the end I opted for detente. I wasn't around enough to defend my property and Fluffy's small-brained persistence was more than I could handle. It was easier to clean the occasional droppings, and gather the eggs that Fluffy conveniently laid behind my couch..
My ex never took my complaints about Fluffy seriously, but still I kept up my fight for justice. While I never quit complaining, I was actually growing rather fond of Fluffy. My kids were gone. I lived alone without a girlfriend, a cat or a dog. Fluffy filled an emptiness in my life, without making too many demands.
Whenever I came home she would run out to greet me. It was just like Lassie except I only had one chicken and no dog. Fluffy was affectionate in her own limited way – without the crotch-sniffing and drooling of a dog, or the clawing, clinging of a cat. She didn't need to be reassured or pet all of the time. In fact she didn't like to be touched at all. Just like me she wanted company without being touched – the perfect companion at the time.
A peaceful coexistence prevailed until one night when I cam home late, plopped into bed and discovered a gooey mess of chicken droppings on my pillow. Occasional droppings on my floor was one thing, but a plop on my pillow was totally disrespectful. Friend or no friend, I decided that Fluffy and I were incompatible as roommates.
The next morning I fixed my windows so I could ventilate my house without leaving my front door open. It was something I had been meaning to do for years but had never got around to. It took over ten minutes, ten minutes
I shut my door on Fluffy. She spent the next week running round and round my house looking for another way in. Now and then she would climb onto my picnic table and fling herself against my window for hours and hours.
All to no end. My mind was made up. I'm especially good at setting boundaries once they've been crossed.
Fluffy moved into my tool shed. I kept the door open so a pair of swallows could nest in the rafters. (Open doors is a recurring theme in all my relations with chickens.) She made quite a mess, but I still felt bad about kicking her out of my house. So I let the mess slide.
Four months later Fluffy was brutally murdered in broad daylight by a friend's dog. I was at home while this silent killer did the dirty deed. She died in my arms. Chickens have a strong will to live and Fluffy took a long time to die.
Caged hens
Caged chickens never live a full life. They miss the chance to do most of the little things that chickens naturally do. They have this cute way of wagging their tail feathers when they have found an especially promising place to scratch. They will be scratching contentedly half the day when all of the sudden they will take off running in search of a better place to forage.
As scavengers chickens play two important role in the farm ecosystem: they reduce insect populations, and they increase farm productivity by converting animal and garden wastes into eggs and meat. Caging chickens takes them out of the farm ecosystem, eliminates the advantages of animal that feeds themselves, and generates more flies on the farm. In a perfect lose/lose situation, both the health of the chickens and the farms suffer.
Chickens kept in cages are no healthier than office workers cooped up in tiny cubicles, or school kids kept in crowded classrooms for the better part of a day.
Killing chickens, kids watching
Kids love chickens. If given the chance. At the Saratoga Community Garden we kept animals for school kids to visit. Once I was leading a group of preschoolers and their mothers (each preschooler came with a mother). The mothers lagged behind in a cluster of conversation while the kids and I walked ahead into a stall where some of the garden apprentices were killing chickens.
The kids were awe struck. They stood in rapt silence, fascinated by the swift journey from animal to meat, the insides of chickens, the holiness of death.
The reverent mood was shattered when the mothers arrived. "Eeeeeeewwwee! Disgusting!" Their childish moans and groans disrupted the solemn moment, and they quickly herded their children away from the scene of the slaughter - afraid to look at where their food comes from.
We suffer from a mass psychosis: we eat more meat than ever, yet we are unwilling to face the consequences of our actions. We shelter our children from real death yet, expose them to sanitized, televised death all the time.
When we witness the sacrifice of the animals (and plants) we eat - that is the real Grace before meals.
Rapist roosters
Temple Grandin in her fantastic book Animals in Translation tells a chilling chicken story about rapist roosters. The story begins when Temple finds a dead hen at a chicken farm. "She was all cut up, and her body was fresh. I was horrified." What was even more startling was the reaction of the chicken farmer.
He told me the rooster did it: the rooster killed the hen. He acted like that was a perfectly normal thing for a rooster to do. He wasn't happy that his rooster was killing hens; he just thought that's the way it was.
The farmer took it for granted that roosters occasionally killed hens, that his rooster's behavior was normal, the loss of a certain percentage of his hens was a part of the cost of doing business. Half of his roosters were hen-killers. His experience wasn't uncommon, the farmer knew of other chicken growers with the same problem.
Three generations ago, this farmer would have been considered a lunatic for his delusion. Everybody and their brother knew that roosters didn't make a habit of killing hens. Anyone who has studied natural selection would know that a species who's males are killing half of the females is doomed to extinction. This farmer's complete ignorance of chicken behavior is astounding. Our mass amnesia is appalling.
For centuries we co-evolved with chickens. In two generations, chickens have disappeared from our lives; the average citizens knows next to nothing about chicken behavior - a recipe for abuse and disaster.
Rapist roosters were a by-product of chicken breeding programs that focused exclusively on single traits rather than the whole animal, on meeting market demands rather than healthy chickens.
Time is money, chicken growers wanted faster growing hens. Breeders responded, but achieved mixed results.
Like every single-trait breeding program, this one had some unintended consequences although they weren't as severe as the rapist roosters. Mainly the faster growing chickens tended to have weaker legs and hearts. the weaker hearts meant a higher rate of flip-over disease which is a nice way of saying that the chickens hearts gave out. Heart disease in chickens got the name flip-over disease because that's what it looks like. When a chicken has heart failure it suddenly flips over and dies.
The next trait chicken breeders sought was larger breasts. Chicken-eaters wanted more white meat, less dark.
That program was successful, too; they got chicken with bigger breasts. This time they got a lot more problems ... the chickens grew so big that their legs couldn't handle their weight. Many chickens were so lame they couldn't walk to the feeder, and some of their legs were deformed and bent, with fluid-filled swellings.
The chickens were probably in constant pain . One study found that the lame chickens would choose to eat bad-tasting feed laced with painkillers over normal tasting feed, which is good evidence that the chickens were suffering.
Lastly the breeders bred for strength and vitality. They created a working chicken that was fast-growing, large breasted and strong enough to thrive. Since the chicken handlers had little or no experience in normal chicken behavior, they overlooked a drastic change in behavior of their roosters. Chicken farmers adapted to the rapist rooster phenomenon with no questions asked.
Normal roosters do a little courtship dance before mating. The hen obliges by crouching down and assuming the position. In the rapist roosters, this little courtship ritual had been deleted by breeders who weren't paying attention to how their breeding programs effected the behavior of their chickens. The changes happened gradually and everyone just got used to them.
When the hens failed to assume the position, the frustrated roosters raped and mutilated them.
Taking care for animals used to be called animal husbandry. The thought of a marriage between a farmer and his animals comes hard to us. We understand that farm animals certainly take as much time and energy as a typical wife. You might as well be married, if you have to devote that much time. We've also heard of such perversions as interspecies sex (but probably not with chickens). What is difficult for us to fathom is a loving relationship with an animal that we intend to eat.
We divide animals into wild animals we fear or admire, pets we love or abuse, and animals we eat.
We can supposedly opt out of the eater/eaten relationship with animals by becoming a vegan, but there are no working models of self sufficient organic agriculture that do not involve raising animals for their manures. Meat is a natural by product of raising animals.. A strictly vegan agriculture in temperate climates would be both inefficient and expensive. This in no way meant to undermine an individual's choice not to eat animals, nor is it meant to justify the wanton consumption of animals and animal byproducts.
Bring back family chickens
We seem to be stuck in this agricultural model of concentrating chickens in ever greater numbers, and isolating ourselves farther and farther away from them. Out of sight, out of mind.
Our children grow up never hearing the excited clucking of a hen laying an egg, never gathering brightly-colored rooster feathers, or baskets of warm brown eggs. Yet one of the first things children learn is to identify farmyard animals, and the sounds they make.
We co-evolved with chickens for thousands of years. Why did we suddenly decide to end the relationship?
Twenty-five years ago there were chickens on Lawrence St. and goats in the Uptown district of Port Townsend. Let's bring back the family chickens.
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