Battery Hen
By Ashia T.P.
An Animal Rights Poem from All-Creatures.org

Battery Hen
By Ashia T.P.

I read “Battery Hen” by Jenny Moxham years ago, and it really hit me. I have chickens of my own, but can’t bring myself to keep them “penned up.” This is a revised version of Jenny’s original poem with some minor modifications and added verses.

Can you imagine how I feel, condemned to life within a place
Where I can't take a single a step because there is no space

I'll never be a mother, or taste the sweet green grass
And each and every single day, I long for death to pass

My feathers pulled and my skin bare on ice-cold wire floor
The only taste of outside world, a rare crack in a door

I'll never taste the sunshine, or soak in it's warm heat
A cold wire floor and nasty food, that is my daily treat

Manure, old food, and rotting flesh smell up this awful place
Ammonia hurts when it's breathed in, yet I'm still in this space

Can you imagine how I hurt, and dream to flap my wings,
Swollen feet and joints, and brittle bones, and the pain de-beaking brings.

Each day's a living nightmare of never-ending pain
My feather-pecking cell mates, already went insane

I'm forced to stand on rotting flesh of comrades who have died
Beneath my feet, where maggots crawl, is where my egg is laid

Those hens who reach their laying end, are gathered in a bunch
Then chopped alive and brutalized, and served young hens for lunch

Each day seems an eternity, yet one more day to dread
I've runny sores and tumors, and I wish that I were dead

And I wonder if, at breakfast, with my egg upon your plate
You ever think about me, or my cruel and tragic fate?

And when your breakfast's over, and you toss away my shell,
Do you realize that the cost to me, was one whole day in hell?


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