It's all pretty bizarre if you ask me. I'm glad you posted that link, though, because it confirms something that I suspected based on my very limited experience with chickens. I thought it was perhaps an aberration, but I guess it wasn't.
To put this in perspective, I have to be honest: Until I moved to the boonies, I personally couldn't care less if the hens who laid the eggs that I bought had been raised in Hoboken in the back seat of a '63 Buick. I just hadn't given it much thought. But I've actually met some chickens since then -- and "free-range" ones at that, although I personally think that "unsupervised by their idiot owners" might be a better and more honest way to put it.
Whatever the case, my opinion of chickens has now changed. Actually, it's more accurate to say that I now have an opinion of chickens whereas I never had one before I moved up here and met a few in person, as it were. And my opinion is that chickens are pretty dumb animals. I mean, seriously, I wonder how they survived Darwin's hammer as long as they did before being domesticated. They're not very bright. And they're not very friendly.
Even possums, which I also think are pretty dumb, are smart enough not to eat their own ****. (They're still working on that "avoiding moving vehicles" thing, though.) Chickens, on the other hand, think **** is a buffet. One chicken ****s, and another one scarfs it down like it's going out of style.
It's pretty disgusting, actually.
Another thing I've learned is that chickens -- even cute little harmless-looking baby chicks -- have this peculiar habit of pecking each other to death for no apparent reason. And if a chicken starts to bleed for whatever reason, it's a goner. Chickens have a blood thirst that not even sharks or lawyers can match. They will surround that chicken and literally peck it to death, feasting on its blood the whole time.
In short, having observed a bit of chicken societal behavior, I've become a big fan of cages. Frankly, I think the chickens are so dumb that they probably don't care one way or the other. And if they do, they're probably happy about not having to eat **** to fit in nor having to worry about being pecked to death if a tick happens to draw some blood and the other chickens get a whiff of it.
As dopey as I believe chickens to be, I do not, however, think that they're the dumbest animals on earth. That honor goes to the tree-hugging, sprout-eating, tie-dye wearing, wannabe hippie couple from whom I used to buy my eggs, who believe that letting their chickens run free, eat each others' ****, peck each other to death, and sometimes get run over by passing cars (because the two dip****s don't even fence their farm off from the road) is a good way to run an egg farm. ("Most drivers stop for them," is their reasoning, by the way.)
The other group that's even stupider than chickens are consumers who encourage this sort of insanity by insisting on eggs laid by "cage-free" hens. But I cut them some slack because I suspect that almost none of them have actually seen how chickens behave toward each other given the opportunity. Maybe if they did, they'd have a different opinion about the matter.
That's my opinion, and I admit that it's based on very limited experience. But based on that limited experience, it seems to me that life as a "cage-free" chicken must be a very harrowing way to live characterized by never-ending fear, non-existent sanitation, and a steady diet of ****. I think if I were a chicken, I'd rather be in a cage. I know that as someone who eats both chickens and eggs, I'd rather they be in cages.
Rich
