Am I Dr. Chickenstein?

I've been petitioned to put words down regarding the young chickens that are rapidly putting on weight in the "brooder" coop currently positioned just below the garden. I'm sure the main point was an opportunity to post some cute pictures. These follow:

















As is evident from the photos, we love having chicks around, and most of our visitors enjoy getting their quota of fuzzball-ogling in. However, I'm actually going to spend the rest of this post talking about some of the philosophy behind chicken keeping on our farm.

Please note that the following two paragraphs constitute breeding notes on the hatch, and will be of limited interest to a general audience. In other words, any of our agri-geek friends may now perk up. Others may decide to skip ahead.

The eggs we incubated this year came from two different sources, both our own. I had used a friend's Americauna x Barred Rock rooster (one he had given me in a batch of excess roosters intended for butchering, but which I took a liking to and saved out). He was a mostly black bird with copper-colored highlights, with a rangy body type, a beard of feathers and a "pea" type comb. Nice combination of genes and expressed traits for my breeding project in search of a superior woodsy free-range egg layer. I bred him to two different hens of ours which both came from Americauna x Black Java stock. One of these two hens was one I had to help out of the shell during last spring's hatch, and which had survived being glued with excess egg white to the incubator's wire mesh floor all night long. If it hadn't laid so many eggs this winter and spring, I would have considered it a poor breeding choice, given its scrawny state of development upon hatching and its failure to hatch naturally. It might have been a good idea. Only three out of twelve of these chicks hatched, and one was even runtier than its mother, requiring help to hatch and then lasting only two days out of the shell. The other hen was my "pet" hen (the one I sometimes allow to free range while I do chores or yard/garden tasks. She is brown with black highlights, and lays olive-colored eggs. Her eggs hatched at a rate of 66%. Half of the chicks were black, and the other half were brown, and patterned like little chipmunks (the ancestral jungle fowl's camouflage strategy).

The other quantity of eggs came from a less interesting source: purebred Buff Chantecler, bred out now to the second generation on our farm. These plain yellow birds with nearly no comb or wattles are pleasant-looking enough in their own solid way, but they tend not to dazzle a person, unless the person happens to be a chicken nerd like myself. I consider them almost ideally suited to portable coops, they are excellent meat birds (quality-wise as opposed to efficiency-wise...nothing can compete with the industrial meat hybrids on efficiency) and very good layers, and are on the edge of extinction. This year, like last year, they hatched like champs, at a rate of about 66%, and right on time. They are pure yellow chicks, just as the adults are pure yellow.

The above two paragraphs probably come across as rather technical for most of you, and probably not interesting. I submit them for the record and for the agriculturally curious among us. What may be of more general philosophical interest is the question: Is consciously breeding chickens for our purposes ethically sound?

Here is the dilemma: a person could make the case that agriculture in general and animal breeding in particular represent a form of the domination of our species over others. I have had a theology-professor friend of mine half-jokingly (only half, you see) try to make this case to me. Ethically, it could be considered superior to get our meddling fingers out of the genetic cauldron and let nature take its course, limiting our strategies for sustenance to scheming the gathering of what self-organizing nature has to offer. In that paradigm, the most ethical way to live would be as a "Fruitarian", which is a person who has chosen to eat only those plant products which the plant intends for consumption by animals.

Without taking time and space to point out a few conceptual flaws with the fruitarian philosophy (get a discussion started in the Comments section if you wish to pursue such), I would like a chance to characterize the chicken breeding endeavor a bit differently:

The chickens are using us to achieve their aims.

In other words, A) The goal, from a genetic perspective, of every organism is to become as populous as the environment can sustain, B) Since the time when humans first took an interest in the Red Jungle Fowl of southeast Asia, domesticating it into the common chicken, it has become the most populous bird on the planet, and C) Protection from the elements/predators and access to resources are the survival strategies of most species. We offer both.

So at the time of the domestication of the chicken, did we see an opportunity in it, or did it see an opportunity in us? I have not researched this thoroughly, but my understanding is that we will never know for sure, but in biological terms the answer is a resounding "BOTH!" In other words, I think of the relationships between humans and domestic/agricultural species not as a situation of plain dominance and exploitation, but rather as a form of biological mutualism...you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.

Where it gets a bit trickier is to work out the details: In overarching terms the above may be true, but when it comes down to individual organisms and their interactions we often fail to match our treatment of the individuals of other species with the underlying mutualism. I do not consider it ethical, for example, to produce or purchase chicks or chickens, and then confine them in conditions that cause them suffering by way of poor hygiene or overcrowding. Neither do I consider it ethical to breed and feed chickens so as to grow at such a phenomenal rate that heart attacks and deformed limbs are commonplace (as is the case in the broiler industry). As another example, industrial-type turkeys are only capable of reproducing by way of artificial insemination, a process fraught with what I consider to be violence and trauma to both the birds and some of the people involved.

Maybe if we're really skilled at our breeding, we might come up with animals similar to the cow in "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" which was of a strain that not only could speak, but declared its desire to be consumed (its ilk was used by some interstellar cafe, where they would approach the tables and solicit orders as to which part of them the diner wished to eat, then cheerily saunter on out back to shoot their selves).

In the meantime, I suggest a compromise specific to our chicken enterprises: I'll offer each individual chicken the best conditions I know how to reasonably and affordably provide, including predator protection, good nutrition, sanitary conditions and the chance to exercise its body and some of its most pressing instincts. I'll watch carefully for signs of ill health or discontent, and will work as I am able to remedy any faults in the system that I discover. In return I hope for animal protein, insect control, enhanced soil fertility, grassland and garden plant management, and entertainment. Nearly every individual raised on or brought to our farm will be analyzed as to its potential as a breeder, and as such will have been given a shot at procreation. When I need to cause them stress by handling them, I will be gentle. When the time comes to remove them from the population, I will be respectful.

I'm not a perfectionist or a purist, so visitors might be disappointed to see a few blobs of manure in the pens, or to see confinement practiced at all. In my view, nature isn't too interested in perfection. But here on our farm, the chickens and we are working our way through the accumulated obstructions--biological, cultural, physical--that thwart us...working our way towards each other, and towards peaceful relationships between our flocks and families.