The natural lives of chickens // Animals Australia

Home Free Betty The natural lives of chickens

Chickens were probably first domesticated about 8000 years ago—first in India and China, then eventually spreading throughout the world. The modern chicken can trace its ancestry back to the red jungle fowl of south east Asia. In fact, the red jungle fowl is still found today in that part of the world.

The real potential of chickens as an agricultural animal providing meat and eggs was not really developed until Roman times. The Romans developed strains of birds for laying and a rudimentary poultry industry was certainly functioning in the Roman Empire.

Jungle fowl and their modern counterparts are omnivores which spend a large part of their waking time pecking and scratching at the ground for food. The beak is especially adapted for this activity, with a high concentration of touch receptors and associated sensory nerves.

The well-known author and zoologist Dr Desmond Morris has pointed out that studies of birds have shown that their world is subtle and complex, and that they have a complicated set of drives and responses—all of which are denied to intensively farmed chickens.

As well as scratching and foraging, another major aspect of natural chicken behaviour is the roosting behaviour when a chicken wants to lay an egg. Obviously, putting a chicken into a cage prevents this and prevents foraging behaviour; it is this which results in chickens in cages showing signs of extreme frustration. It is also apparent from scientific studies that cage housing inhibits other natural behaviours including flapping their wings, assuming their natural standing alert posture, dust-bathing and preening. All of this adds to the behavioural signs of frustration which have been observed in many studies of caged chickens.

Professor Marian Dawkins of Oxford University has recently carried out studies on chickens housed in commercial free range environments (about 20,000 chickens per facility). In those studies, it was found that chickens prefer ranging over areas with trees, avoid bright sun and stay close to tree cover. This confirms that the chicken's natural drives are similar to those observed in its ancestor—the red junglefowl—which lives in a habitat of bamboo clumps separated by spaces. This allows the birds to see the approach of any predator and to rapidly get into cover.

Professor Dawkins and her colleagues have also done a fascinating long-term project to see whether keeping free range chickens in an area with growing trees resulted in more “free-ranging” of the birds. They did this on a commercial basis and after 3 years found not only that there was significantly more “ranging” as the trees grew, but also that consumers were happy to pay the extra for birds reared in this way. In other words, letting the chickens express their natural behaviours could be done in a way which could still allow a farmer to make a profit!

Even though they were domesticated some 8000 years ago—we are still in our infancy in fully understanding their uniqueness.

“Chickens exist in stable social groups. They can recognize each other by their facial features. They have 24 distinct cries that communicate a wealth of information to one other, including separate alarm calls depending on whether a predator is travelling by land or sea. They are good at solving problems. ‘As a trick at conferences I sometimes list these attributes, without mentioning chickens, and people think I’m talking about monkeys,’ Says Dr. Chris Evans, Professor of Psychology at Macquarie University, Australia.

“Perhaps most persuasive is the chicken’s intriguing ability to understand that an object, when taken away and hidden, nevertheless continues to exist. This is beyond the capacity of small children.”

Humanity has long seen chickens as useful for their ability to provide eggs for human consumption. However, it is clear that chickens have capabilities, natural instincts and behavioural needs well beyond what many have considered.

To deny them the opportunity to engage in natural behaviour inherent to their species is in itself cruel.

Some 11 million laying hens in Australia will spend their entire lives in battery cages—where crammed in with other birds—they will be unable even to stretch their wings.

These birds are not egg laying machines. Each one is an individual living being capable of feeling fear, pain and frustration. It is impossible to look at hens in battery cages, denied all comforts and quality of life, and not see the extreme cruelty in this system.

It is time to Free Betty... through consumers withdrawing the financial support on which these cruel animal factories depend.

This is not about animal rights—it is about righting human wrongs.

References

See the European Commission Scientific Veterinary Committee Report (1996) at europa.eu.int/comm/food/fs/sc/oldcomm4/out33_en.pdf
For more detail, see the website of the Humane Society of the US at www.hsus.org
We are grateful to Professor Marian Dawkins for directing us to her website at useres.ox.ac.uk/~snikwad/page1/page6/page6.html