By Chicken POS-3378-4457-1975

These days you hear a lot about free range or cage free chickens, and that’s fascinating I guess. I’ve even thought about it myself, getting out there in a farmyard, eating bugs and rocks and whatever else I find. It does have an undeniable pull, to live in the outside world as countless chickens have going back into time immemorial. But then I think about the pleasures of modern chicken life, free healthcare, unlimited corn, and never having to move. Sure, there might be some sort of innate pleasure in pecking food from the ground, or hiding eggs in the eves of houses, but what happens when it rains, or if a fox comes. No thank you, I’ll take dry and uneaten over wet feathers and foxes any day.

Besides, there’s no culture out there in the farmyard, just some trees and a bit of yard to scratch at. Here in the factory we have music piped in and sometimes, if they forget to turn off the lights at night, we’ll put on the play. Just last week we staged “Several Thousand Chickens Clucking at Night,” so moving. No, I don’t think I’ll be moving out to the farm anytime soon. I’ll be turning six weeks old soon, retirement age here in the factory, and I guess I’m just too old to try and learn and new tricks. I’ve got my 70 square inches of cage and that’s all I need.