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Rani and Felicity
A Tale of Two chicken
BIODIVERSITY- SERIES
Text : RADHA
Illustrations & Layout : APARNA CHAKRABARTY
Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology
Acknowledgements
C. David Coats for photographs of Felicity on page 22 from his Old MacDonald's Factory Farm.
Compassion in World Farming, U.K., for other photographs used in the book.
© 1996
Research Foundation for Science, Technology & Ecology
Reprinted in 2004
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This is the story of two hens, Rani and
Felicity. Rani was raised in the
backyard of a small Indian farmer.
Felicity grew up in a modern factory
farm in the United States of America.
The difference in their upbringing
raises important issues of kindness and
compassion towards animals, animal
rights, health of humans and animals,
as well as issues about dignity of life.
Rani and Felicity’s stories also raise
important questions that we as
consumers have to answer. Our
answers will determine the kind of
3
Meet Rani
A Chicken belonging to a desi breed, Rani
lives in the backyard of Kamala’s house.
She runs around the yard freely
throughout the day, with her friends.
India has at least 14 indigenous breeds.
These
include the famous fighting breeds like
Aseel,
Kadaknath and Kalahasti. Famous Indian
table
breeds are Aseel, Chittagong, Punjab
Brown and Ghagus, which is fast
becoming extinct. Other indigenous
breeds include Denki, Lolab, Kashmir
Faverol, Teni Nacked Neck, Tellicherry
(which is also used for preparing Ayurvedic
4
Felicity is a laying hen in a factory farm in the
United States of America. She lives, with three
other hens, in a battery house, in 18”x12” cage
where all four sides are made of wire. The floor
slopes forward so that eggs roll, and can be
easily collected.
Each bird has an area of 6”x9”. Felicity’s
wings, which would have measured 32 inches
from tip to tip, have been worn down to the shaft
by months of constant rubbing against the wire
cage or other hens. As the birds search for more
place, they claw one another.
This is just one aisle in a laying house that
holds 60,000 hens or more, crammed together
in three or four tiers of battery cages. The birds
continuously cackle and make churning
movements. By the time they are two years old,
they are exhausted, and are killed for soup and
pet food.
5
Rani’s friends include both male
and female chicken. The male
cock is very colourful, with a
large comb
6
There is no place for male chicks in a factory farm that produces eggs. When eggs are
hatched, a ‘chicken puller’ separates the male chicks when they are one day old. These
fluffy male chicks are put into a bag where they die of suffocation. In other farms, they
may be killed by cutting off their heads, or being exploded in an explosion chamber.
In factory farms, the killed male chicks and their shells are ground into paste
and fed to other chicken, turning them into cannibals.
THE DEATH ROW
7
Did you know that free
range chicken spend 50%
of their time pecking
for food?
The beak is the means of
survival of free range
chicken. It gives them
the freedom to
find their
own food.
Chicken also need their beaks for preening, cleaning and grooming.
8
In overcrowded factory farms, chicken turn aggressive and hysterical and use their beaks
to peck each other to death. They are therefore debeaked when they are one day old.
Felicity’s beak was jammed against a red hot metal blade heated to 800°c for about two
seconds, so that part of the beak was destroyed. (Water boils at 100°c).
A chicken’s beak is not like a fingernail, made of dead tissue. It has a layer of highly
sensitive soft tissue between the outer layer of horn and the inner bone. Some chicken
have to get debeaked again when they are about 20 weeks old either because enough
was not burnt off the first time, or because it has grown back. During debeaking, the
beaks of many chicken are burnt too far to allow them to eat. So they starve to death.
Chicken in overcrowded factory farms turn pecking for play into
pecking to death—a form of cannibalism.
9
As chicks, Rani and her friends spent a lot of their time running
around Kamala’s backyard. They use their beak for a number of
activities, like pecking at food and pecking one another in play.
Rani and her friends peck at insects and worms. In feeding
themselves, they
also act as agents of pest control. However, unlike pesticides, they
10
Overcrowded cages means pest infestations, and Felicity needs to be given heavy doses of
pesticides to protect her from pests. In a battery farm, Felicity gets her water and food from
troughs running in front of the cages.
Living on the wire mesh, the hens’ feet become crippled and malformed. Often their flesh
grows around the wire. They cannot move, and die from thirst and starvation.
In broiler houses, chicken farmers want the birds to gain weight fast. They do this by
controlling the lighting. When the lights are switched the chicken think it is day and feed. By
having more frequent
‘days and nights’, the chicken can be forced to eat more, so that they can gain the required
weight faster.
11
After the crops are harvested, Rani and other
chicks and hens have a feast, running around
and pecking for fallen grains and worms in
the fields.
12
Felicity and companions are given ‘scientifically balanced rations’ made from
wheat, barley, rye, oats, maize millet and soya. Often the meat from dead,
discarded and diseased chicken is crushed and added to their feed, forcing them to
become cannibals.
In addition, these chicken daily get heavy doses of antibiotics, pesticides and
It takes 2.8 kg. of corn to make one pound of chicken.
Egg layers also need 2.6 pounds of corn and
13
Rani and her friends do not
compete with humans for
grain.
Kamala feeds them some
grain,
house waste, dairy waste
such as whey and buttermilk,
which gets converted into
14
Factory farms use 375 gallons of
water to produce one pound of
chicken
The fast food restaurants of Kentucky
Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut alone will
require
at least 1,00,000 chicken a day in
India.
This will require 93,750,000 gallons of
19 GALLONS
375 GALLONS
15
The waste produced by Rani and
her
friends makes very good balanced
organic fertiliser for Kamala’s farm.
This waste contains 3% nitrogen,
2% each of phosphorus and
potash. Kamala has to
3%
NITROGEN
2%
PHOSPHORUS
2%
POTASH
Inorganic fertilisers such as Urea, NPK and DAP damage the soil and the environment.
16
AMMONIA
MOISTURE
STENCH
In factory farms, the litter is turned
from wealth into waste. As thousands
of hens are crowded into a small space
and are forced to keep feeding, their
litter collects on the floor below the
wire mesh in large quantities. Felicity
and her friends have to bear the stench
of urine and dung for long hours every
day.
Hens exposed to high levels of
ammonia and moisture due to litter
17
Rani and her friends hardly ever
get ill.
Desi chicken breeds are
remarkably
tough, and may live upto even
twenty
years of age. They do not need to
be medicated daily. They do not
18
Felicity is prone to numerous diseases like avian flu,
infectious bronchitis, tuberculosis, cancer, etc.
R.I.P.
Overcrowding too causes pest infestations and leads to
stress diseases like caged layer fever where chicks use up
the minerals from their bones and muscles and they cannot
even stand. Another mysterious disease is the ‘flip over
syndrome’ where the chicks jump up into the air, sometimes
emitting a loud squawk and then fall over dead.
By the end of one year, upto 18% of the chicken die, not from
any disease, but because they are caged.
19
When Rani’s mother wanted to lay an
egg, she searched for a suitable warm
and dark nesting place. There, away
from the eyes of other hens and
humans, she laid her eggs, taking just
about a quarter of an hour. She sat on
the eggs, keeping them warm and
safe. When the chicks were hatched,
she clucked at them, looked after them
taught them to peck for food and to
groom themselves with their beaks.
Indian species of hens are famous
20
When Felicity wants to lay an egg, she has no
privacy. The cage is filled with the sound of
tens of thousands of other hens. The air is full
of dust, flies and feathers and stinks of shit
and urine.
Felicity takes more than one hour to lay her
egg, which rolls away immediately because of
the floor angle. The overcrowding and mesh
floor prevent
her from reaching it.
Factory farmed hens can never know the joy
of motherhood.
Scientists are trying to manipulate hens to
21
Freedom for
After living for two years in a battery cage, some compassionate
friends of
Felicity released her from her slavery. Although in poor physical
shape with deformed feet, she started pecking and scratching the
22
Rani and her kind, however, are today in danger of extinction.
With the growth of the fast-food industry, the need for chicken is increasing
tremendously. Factory farming is coming into India in a big way. The breeds
farmed will be those
that put on weight faster, or have less brooding instincts. The others will be
neglected and will disappear.
Today, the egg and poultry industry is a cottage industry, providing the
livelihoods of
millions of small farming families with very little land, or with no land at all.
Factory
farms, ‘manufacturing’ millions of chicken, monopolise markets, and thus drive
these
millions of small producers out of business.
The increase in fast-foods also means that millions of people involved in the
snack-sector—the golgappa walas, the kulcha chana walas, the masala dosa
walas, will be out of business.
Meat is called a cheap source of nutrition. Yet for each kilo of meat produced,
lots of poor
families have to go without grain and water.
23
You can make a difference.
Your choice of foods is a choice that can
affect your life and health, the lives of
millions
of chickens, and the livelihoods of
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