Chickens are intelligent, friendly animals with distinct personalities, and highly developed social and communicative behaviour. For example, mother hens will communicate with their unhatched chicks while still inside the egg. Chickens enjoy spending their time scratching in the grass, pecking at grains on the ground, and taking thorough sand baths.
When well-kept and cared for, a chicken can live up to 15 years. In contrast, battery hens on factory farms sadly live for only around 20 months, male chicks only one day. During this time, they lay some 300 eggs per year, a heavy strain that takes its toll. The life of a broiler chicken, kept for meat production, is even shorter with 40 days in conventional systems.
Throughout history, people have raised domestic chickens for their eggs and eventually for slaughter. Today, chickens are selectively bred for specific traits, such as high egg production in laying hens and rapid fattening in broiler chickens. Industrial poultry farming aims for efficient production of meat and eggs. However, the lives of these high-performance chickens are often short and marked by suffering.
