Do a Good Deed for Chickens for International Respect for Chickens Day May 4

United Poultry Concerns urges activists to plan an action for chickens in honor of International Respect for Chickens Day May 4th or during that weekend. Write a letter to your local newspaper, set up a library display, leaflet at a busy street corner – do something! Here are some Chicken Facts: 

• Chickens come from the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia.
• Perched in the trees and sensitive to infrared light, chickens see the sun an hour before humans do.
• Despite domestication and genetic modifications, chickens are essentially the same as their wild relatives, the Red Jungle Fowl.
• Through crowing, every rooster in the forest knows where every other rooster and his family are at all times. Each rooster can recognize the crow of at least thirty other roosters.
• In nature, the hen and rooster find and create a ground nest together. They try out secluded places before settling on the site they both like.
• Embryonic chicks communicate with the mother hen and each other from inside the egg.
• The mother hen turns each egg 30 or more times a day in response to cues from the chick embryo.
• The mother hen helps her chicks break out of their shells.
• Roosters protect their families. Hens and roosters will fight to the death to protect their chicks from predators.
• Roosters are foragers, philanderers, and family men who seldom fight in their natural habitats.
• Chickens love bamboo seeds and figs.
• A touching example of human love for a chicken is told by the British humanitarian writer, Henry Salt, concerning an old woman he once met in a roadside cottage “who had for her companion, sitting in an armchair by the fire, a lame hen, named Tetty, whom she had saved and reared from chicken-hood.” A few years later, Salt met the woman again, and asked about Tetty, but learned that she was dead. “Ah, poor Tetty!” the woman said in tears; “she passed away several months ago, quite conscious to the end.” 

United Poultry Concerns will send you brochures and posters for the specific event or action you plan for International Respect for Chickens Day. Donations to support our work are requested and gratefully received. Thank You.