The Death of My Backyard Chicken

Since May 2013, my wife and I have been raising a flock of backyard chickens — 16 in total in the heart of San Jose, California. The experience has been lovely and magical. Not many people think of chickens as pets, at least in larger cities. Many say chickens are “dumb” birds. Our experience has been contrary to what our society thinks about chickens. Chickens have feelings, they are smart enough to distinguish their owners from the strangers. We enjoy every minute with them and spoil them with fresh fruits, veggies and barley. Most importantly, they have access to the open skies, fresh water and sunlight. The chickens do their part of showering us with fresh eggs with deep yellow yolks and tons of love. We got more than a dozen eggs every day for two straight years! Now that our chickens have turned three, the egg laying has slowed down significantly and their death rate has started to accelerate.

Their sudden death left me wondering — why? A typical age of a chicken is 5- 7 years but they can certainly live longer. Our chickens have the best life a chicken can have with ideal weather, plenty of food and shelter. Then why were our chickens dying at the age of three — the death almost perfectly timed with the inability to lay anymore eggs. I discovered the answer to my question in Sonia Faruqi’s book, Project Animal Farm: An Accidental Journey into the Secret World of Farming and the Truth About Our Food.

Genetics — our chickens have been genetically engineered for maximum egg production and the shortest possible life. Today hatcheries are producing genetically modified baby chicks for large scale factory farms. The same chickens are being raised in backyard farms in the United States and beyond. After reading Sonia’s book, I was heartbroken to hear about the state of factory farms. The chickens are kept in multistory cages. The space available to a chicken during it’s entire life is limited to a size of a book. Almost none of the factory chickens get to roam freely or have access to direct sunlight. Their cages are fully automated and farmers control the operation from their offices. The cages are filthy with poop and ammonia. If a chicken dies, the factory farmers don’t care. It’s a business and money triumphs over a chickens health and well-being.

The issue with genetically modified chickens is that they are a egg laying machine. These hens lay an abnormal number of eggs — one egg a day for approximately 730 days straight. Their internal organs start to weaken and in some cases turn inside out. This is what we observed with our chickens. The sad truth is that there is no cure because genetics rule. We’ve been murmuring in our chicken’s ears, “stop laying eggs, we don’t need your eggs. we just want you to be healthy and live a long life.” But there is nothing these chickens can do about their genetics and their early death is inevitable.

In my mind, I started to compare the death of factory farm chickens to that our our backyard chickens with identical genetics. I’ve been telling myself this story — we did our very best to to give them a happy life. It is sad to see them die but the issue of genetically modified chickens is prevalent globally. As Sonia rightfully points out in her book, consumers have the most power over what they choose to eat. Unfortunately consumers are clueless. They don’t know how food gets to their table. But I can see this change in the coming years and decades. With more awareness and education, I am hopeful that more people will at least give chickens a great life by raising them in their yards.

If you currently raise chickens or are thinking about raising them for eggs, leave a comment below and share your experience. I’d love to hear what you have to say.