Why Chickens Are Underrated

by Miranda Gent

This is Lily, an ex-battery hen - before she was rescued and eight months later.

Everyone is always shocked when I tell them that I keep chickens as pets, but to me it really isn't odd at all.

I've kept chickens since the age of about six and I could not love them more. I think that they are much more adorable, charismatic and sociable than many other far more common pets, such as rabbits, who just blink at you and flare their nostrils, and guinea pigs, who spend their lives hidden deep under piles of straw and are terrified by the sight of you. These animals may be furry, but they are not my idea of friendly.

Chickens are simply far more interesting.

They are actually very sociable animals, which indicates intellect, who always stay very close together and like spending time with you, even when food isn’t involved, which is more than can be said for many pets, such as hamsters. For example, my chickens spend a lot of time sitting on our back doorstep where they can see us through the glass door and they even go to the lengths of jumping onto tables, into plant pots or bushes in order to be able to see us and (we like to think) to keep us company while we work or if we’re home alone, as they are always very aware of who's in the house, due to their amazing eyesight and hearing.

In fact, in many ways, my chickens shock my family and I with their intelligence. For example, they know that plates or bowls mean food, and have learnt their way around the ground floor of my house after sneaking in multiple times when the doors have been left open. They have also learnt to stay quiet when exploring the house because they know that if they get caught they will be abruptly escorted from the vicinity.

Furthermore, unlike many animals, like cats, they are not at all deceived by the confusing illusion that mirrors create of there being another identical chicken staring back at you. In fact, they are completely bored by their reflections and, after a momentary glance, they move on quickly in their search for food or something more interesting.

Indeed, chickens are actually extremely intelligent, as surprising as this may be to many people. At only three days old, chickens are able to perform basic arithmetic and discriminate qualities, as demonstrated by an experiment in which a group of chicks were presented with two sets of objects which were then hidden by a screen, and amazingly the chicks then managed to track the screen which hid the larger number of objects, therefore apparently performing simple addition and subtraction.

Moreover, chickens have been proven to exercise self-control, which doesn't usually appear in humans until four years of age. This is validated by an experiment in which a group of hens were given the option between a two second delay and six seconds of access to food, or a six second delay with twenty-two seconds of access to food. The hens decided to wait the six seconds for longer access to food.

In addition to this, chickens also have amazing eyesight and better motion sensing abilities than we do. They can actually see more of the colour spectrum than humans, as they can see ultraviolet light, so they see everything differently. Hens use this ability to see ultraviolet light in order to evaluate the condition of their chick’s feathers, which they can see by how shiny they are, allowing them to determine which of their chicks are the healthiest and most likely to survive. However, like humans, they are blind in the dark, making them vulnerable to predators at night time. They also have three eyelids, two which go up and down, and one which is clear and goes sideways across the eye in order to clean and protect it.

Furthermore, what my family and I have always noticed about chickens is how individual they all are, as they all have their own separate and distinguishable personalities, which I think would surprise a lot of people. We’ve had some chickens who have been more quiet and some who have been more mischievous, demanding and chaos-causing. For example, we had a hen, named Pickles, who was constantly causing trouble, such as digging up a newly-planted flower bed or sneaking into the house when we made the mistake of leaving the door open in warmer weather. Through her mischief, she actually managed to develop a liking for tea after we caught her drinking from an unattended mug of it left on an outside table one summer. I don’t think that anyone could say the same about their pet guinea pig, hamster or rabbit. Maybe budgie or duck. In fact, I feel that it's not only chickens who are underrated, but birds in general. They mainly seem to be thought of as stupid and uninteresting by society, which in my opinion is a great shame as I find them to be the opposite.

As a result of these prejudices and assumptions, chickens have been treated inhumanely in the farm industry for many years, although improvements have been made recently. However, I believe that there is more to be done, as highlighted by Jamie and Jimmy in a recent episode of Jamie and Jimmy’s Friday Night Feast, in which I discovered something that I am ashamed to say I had never known about or considered before. Although we may buy free range eggs at the supermarket when we are buying eggs individually, many of the eggs which are in numerous other products such as cakes, mayonnaise and ice cream contain eggs from battery hens, not free range hens.

Battery hens may have more space than they used to, but many of them still live in cramped conditions, in cages inside barns with little or no access to natural light. For me this is very upsetting, as I regularly see how frustrated my two chickens get at being shut in their generous sized cage meant for four chickens after just a couple of hours, and I know that keeping hens in the cramped conditions that battery hens are subjected to aggravates the hens so much that they begin to fight and bully each other, leaving them all with very few feathers and in poor physical and mental health, as hens who have to live like this become extremely miserable. Moreover, being in these conditions, Battery hens never get the joy that they so deserve of being able to run around and flap their wings and feel grass under their feet. They never get to dig and scratch around and chase each other in circles when one finds something exciting like a snail. I personally find this heart-breaking, as in my mind chickens are certainly not stupid and dull animals to be shut in cages for the best part of their egg-laying lives, then to be taken to slaughter at about the age of two or three, when a few of my chickens have lived to the age of about seven, and I think one of them might have even reached eight. Therefore, I see this treatment of chickens as hideous and completely unreasonable, and although we may not know it, when we buy products containing eggs, we may be supporting the Battery hen industry.

Another example of cruelty to chickens is that on many chicken farms the chickens have their beaks ‘clipped’, which means that the pointy end of their beak is cut off, so that they can not harm each others’ feathers so much, for whatever reason, but the main one being fighting to establish or maintain the pecking order. This is deemed necessary by most industry farmers, as the flocks that they keep are very large, and the more chickens that are kept together, the stronger the pecking order will be and the more fighting there will be to establish and maintain it. So, ‘clipping’ beaks may seem reasonable when approaching this matter with business in mind, but it is actually completely illogical, as ‘clipping’ the beaks of chickens only makes them more aggressive. This is because their beaks contain numerous nerve endings and are highly sensitive, so ‘clipping’ them causes chickens immense pain which could last for months, to the extent that this alters their behaviour.

I would like to think that people would be shocked and horrified to be informed of this management of chickens, as I don’t think that it is something that many people will be aware of as people seem to be under the allusion that animal cruelty is a thing of the past. However, I strongly think that this is something that everyone should be aware of and take action against, for example by checking where the eggs in their food are sourced from, and the living conditions of the chickens who laid them.

As well as this, I hope that anyone who reads this article will now think twice about chickens before tucking into their KFC and perhaps even consider giving some a home, as I find that they are a true delight! And if you could rescue battery hens, then even better. Just think of the fate that you are saving them from and how much brighter their future becomes when you decide to look after them.

Happy chicken-keeping :)