Chicken brother

[sampath]

Man is nothing but one of the co-existing species in the world with his animal brothers was conveniently forgotten by most. We are cruel to our animal and bird brothers. They don’t have a mouth to tell their sufferings. We torture them. We are cruel to them. And I am ashamed of it.

 

I will tell you some facts about our chicken brother. When somebody says ‘chicken’ the next word that appears in our mind is “tasty, yummy, and delicious” and so on. But there is more to our chicken brother.

 

Up until a few years ago, few scientists had spent any time learning about chickens’ intelligence, but people who run farmed animal sanctuaries have had plenty to say about the subtleties of the chicken world. It may seem odd, since we don’t know chicken brothers very well, but it’s true that some chicken brothers like classic rock, while others like classical music; some chicken brothers enjoy human company, while others are standoffish, shy, or even a bit aggressive. Just like dogs, cats, and humans, each chicken brother is an individual with a distinct personality.

 

Like us, chicken brothers form strong family ties and mourn when they lose a loved one.

 

Kim Sturla, who runs Animal Place, a sanctuary for abused and discarded farmed animals, has seen chicken brothers empathize and show affection for one another. She recalls an endearing story about two elderly chicken brothers that had been rescued from a city dump. “Mary” and “Notorious Boy” bonded and would roost on a picnic table together. One stormy night when the rain was really pelting down, Sturla went to put Mary and Notorious Boy in the barn and saw that “the rooster had his wing extended over the hen protecting her.”

 

Chicken brothers are able to learn by watching the mistakes of others and are very adept at teaching and learning. Chicken brothers also can learn to use switches and levers to change the temperature in their surroundings and to open doors to feeding areas. When in natural surroundings, not on factory farms, they form friendships and social hierarchies, recognize one another, love their young, and enjoy a full life, dust-bathing, making nests, roosting in trees, and more.-1 (From http://www.peta.org/feat/hiddenlives/index.html)

 

But how do we treat this intelligent brother, who has every right to live in the world like us?

 

We have concentration camps for this intelligent brother. Every chicken brother is given the space equal to the size of an A4 paper in these concentration camps. This fractures the bones of many chicken brothers and they are hung upside down on their broken legs. Many are scalded when they are fully alive and are conscious of the pain.

 

There are a few methods of slaughtering that are practiced, and not one is humane and how it’s supposed to be done. One is decapitating the animal brother. Another is the Halal method where the neck is slit in 2 1/2 spots while they are conscious and that forces them to bleed to death. In that case the animal brother is alive and aware that they are severely bleeding and they are in excruciating pain. Burying an animal brother’s head in the ground is not a common practice but it is still used. That way they are suffocated to death.

 

All the while the animal brother, usually a pig brother, is squealing endlessly. Sometimes there is not even that much effort put into slaughtering the animal brother and they will just burn them to death. Cattle brothers are many times stunned in the head with a steel bolt, their throats are slit, and then they are left laying around to bleed to death. The bleeding method is used when they want the least damage to the carcass as possible. The cattle brother is cut in a place where they will bleed the fastest. Many animal brothers do make it as far as being skinned when they are still living and feeling pain to the fullest. -2 (http://www.all-creatures.org/articles/ar-aninsidelook.html)

 

Have we civilized?