If You Were a Chicken

 

If you were a chicken, what kind of a life would you want?

I bet you’d want to scratch around in the dirt for bugs and worms.

I bet you’d want a little space now and then.

Maybe if you lived your whole life on a factory farm

So crowded you can hardly move

and you can’t hear your own voice

above a thousand other voices

Maybe you wouldn’t know any better.

But I bet there would be powerful unmet urges,

And the knowing that something is very wrong.

How can we as humans not care?

How could I eat that curried chicken salad yesterday,

When I had said I was done eating chicken?

I am not perfect.

But today, I will do better.

 

This post was inspired by this article about Perdue Farms trying to do better.

Here are some baby chicks at God’s Whisper Farm where I attended a writer’s retreat:

And here’s a God’s Whisper Farm rooster. He might not look happy to us, but he takes his job of protecting his family seriously.

Photo by Ayla Likens