Photo by: Mercy for Animals, Weaver Brothers Egg Farm
in Versailles, Ohio
Megaphone, please.
"I am battery hen. I live in a cage so small I cannot stretch
my wings. I am forced to stand night and day on a sloping wire mesh floor
that painfully cuts into my feet. The cage walls tear my feathers, forming
blood blisters that never heal. The air is so full of ammonia that my
lungs hurt and my eyes burn and I think I am going blind. As soon as I
was born, a man grabbed me and sheared off part of my beak with a hot
iron, and my little brothers were thrown into trash bags as useless alive.
My mind is alert and my body is sensitive and I should have been
richly feathered. In nature or even a farmyard I would have had sociable,
cleansing dust baths with my flock mates, a need so strong that I perform
'vacuum' dust bathing on the wire floor of my cage. Free, I would have
ranged my ancestral jungles and fields with my mates, devouring plants,
earthworms, and insects from sunrise to dusk. I would have exercised my
body and expressed my nature, and I would have given, and received, pleasure
as a whole being. I am only a year old, but I am already a 'spent hen.'
Humans, I wish I were dead, and soon I will be dead. Look for pieces
of my wounded flesh wherever chicken pies and soups are sold."
© United Poultry Concerns. From Karen Davis, PhD,
"Thinking Like a Chicken: Farm
Animals and the Feminine Connection," Animals and Women: Feminist
Theoretical Explorations, Durham & London: Duke University Press,
1995.
Photo: Susan Rayfield
From rotting in cages to roosting in branches, former battery hens enjoy life at
United Poultry Concerns. Despite thousands of years of domestication, chickens
are essentially the wild jungle fowl of their ancestry, with the same cravings for
lush soil, trees, and activities suited to the tropical forests they originated in. May is
International Respect for Chickens Month. Let people know how beautiful and “green”
chickens truly are.
(From UPC Spring-Summer 2011 Poultry Press)
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
|
Photo by Laurie Melichar
| |
This is Luce, who was rescued by UPC member Laurie Melichar.
Every year in the United States, a quarter of a billion of these beautiful
male chickens are buried alive or ground up alive by the egg industry as
soon as they are born. These birds represent 250 million more reasons each
year to go - and stay - vegan. |
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001 & earlier
See Also:
|
![[pdf]](/pics/pdfdoc.gif){kind=small}
