07.18.07
Chickens are Smart: I’ll Cluck to That!
Albert Chicken-stein (not his real name, but his hair/feather-style is very reminiscent of the brainiac, don’t you think?). Chickens are as smart as primates. They have well-developed memories, an ability to learn, and a desire to not be eaten. This little clucker resides at Poplar Springs Animal Sanctauary.
The United Poultry Concerns President, Karen Davis, has her hackles up over people who continue to bad-mouth chickens. A recent article quoted a woman who justified eating chickens by saying they are the “least intelligent” of all farmed animals. Karen sets the record straight by showing the overwhelming evidence in support of chicken intelligence in a lucid editorial that The Buffalo News ran July 17, 2007.
I concur with Karen, chickens are much more intelligent than we give them credit. When people trash talk turkeys and chickens, I can’t help but think of this as nothing more than victim blaming. When allowed a more natural existence, chickens are extremely inquisitive and intelligent.
But on the modern farm they have innumerable disadvantages. First, they never get to meet their mothers. They are raised in hatcheries where they endure gruesome mutilations (like de-beaking or toe removal) without anesthetic, painful shots, and some (as in the case with the males of the egg-laying industry) are tossed into a trash bin and left to suffocate on the bodies of their fellow chicks.
Those that live are deprived of the love, nurturance, and guidance that a mother would give. Mother hens didn’t earn their reputation as being doting, concerned mothers for nothing.
Next, they are forced to live in awful factory farms. Overcrowded in tiny cages or large barns by the tens of thousands, they become filthy standing in their own waste, and sick from breathing in the ammonia from their manure. Contagious diseases are a huge problem, and even the antibiotics that are routinely added to their feed do not stop many of them from becoming sick. Sick and injured birds languish in misery untreated. It is not cost-effective to give them individualized treatment, and any veterinarian on staff will treat them as a flock, not as individuals.
On top of it all, they are completely stressed out and frustrated. Their natural needs to perch in trees, sun bathe, rummage for food, stretch their wings, fly, and live in a small community of other hens where they know their own rank in the pecking order are completely stifled. Imagine living your entire life confined in an elevator with seven strangers, and you get the idea of how stressed and miserable these animals must be.
Possibly worst of all, is how the industry has intensively bred chickens to lay lots of eggs or grow lots of meat really fast. Selective breeding has put most chickens raised on farms at a disadvantage from day one. “Broilers,” the chickens raised for meat, add the pounds so quickly that their bones can’t calcify fast enough to support their own weight, causing many of them to become lame. These poor birds pathetically try to get around by dragging themselves with their wings.
The chicken and egg industy have created monstrous chickens who, contrary to evolution, are less able to survive on their own than their predecessors. Industry-bred chickens suffer greater musculo-skeletal disorders, heart disease, and other congenital problems. In essence, the industry has de-evolved them.
Then, after all of these genetic, physical, relational, and psychological abuses have been heaped on chickens, people have the gall to call them “stupid.” Imagine how smart you would be if you had never known your parents and were raised in a filthy, disease-ridden closet.
Yet if our society is “blaming the victim,” as I suggest it is, what could be our possible motive? Is it possible that we are uneasy with the fact that we slaughter and eat 8 billion sensitive, otherwise intelligent and personable chickens every year out of habit and convenience? I’d say that’s a pretty heavy burden to carry around.
So why not lighten your emotional burden by adopting a delicious and healthy vegan diet? It’s 100% proven to help you remove the guilt and avoid the cognitive dissonence. Here are some tips to help you transition. Then your diet will show not only that you respet our intelligent feathered friends, but also that you give a cluck. 
This text was written in 2007 by Freeman Wicklund of FreemanWicklund.org, and it may be freely reprinted or distributed in any e-zine, e-mail, newsletter or blog as long as this sentence and its Web links are included.