Animal Aid

First

THEY'RE JUST CHICKENS

By Morgan Cormack

I'm the factory farmer,
That everybody blames.
For the chicken that they eat,
Even though it's all the same.

So what if they can run free?
Or are cooped up in a cage?
They all taste the same to me,
Same job, same wage.

I keep mine in a warehouse,
Some let them roam free,
They're just chickens for Pete's sake,
But people say: 'No cruelty'.

Can you resist the temptation?
When they're on offer or buy one get one free?
Then you turn around and point the finger,
And blame people like me.

You eat them from KFC.
And in your special fried rice
You probably eat one every week,
But i'm the one that pays the price.

The letters of complaints and disgust,
The dirty looks and stares,
But they're just chickens!
Do you really care?

I clip their beaks off,
Then chuck them away,
You also eat their babies,
The eggs that they lay.

So don't blame me for this,
You're the reason why,
You eat them, I sell them,
Any anyway, chickens can't cry.

Second

Doomsday

By Suad Abdi

A shiver ripples my feathers
There's something different about the stale air
The normally loud buzzing is now merely a hum
I know there's something gravely wrong
But the minutes past by just as they should.

The struggle for food is no longer a struggle
The food arrives but only the young ones seem to feed
The elder hens simply sit on their yet developed legs
Staring motionless as if waiting
For something the others cannot see

The fluorescent lights flicker on
But still the others remain stone cold
Slowly the inaudible hum transforms into silence
And everybody seems to sense it...
Panic strikes as deafening screech pierces the silence
Heads slowly turn to witness long arms seizing hens from the dusty ground

The panic turns to mayhem as all the hens run
But there's nowhere to run...
Thousands amongst thousands of hens scamper in all directions
But many fall as their legs give way under their humongous bulk

Myself and many others
Briefly glimpsed the bright sun
Before being thrown into another shed
Until their knives had been sharpened

I knew what was coming but didn't seem to mind
The life i'd lived wasn't one i'd miss
And so I sat silent
No squawk left my beak
Not even when the door of the shed was finally thrown open
Not even when I was carried off
But then I saw the knife
And my bravado gave way
The screech that erupted was thunderous
But I was soon silenced as a hot substance oozed out and trickles down my neck
Next thing I felt nothing and I knew my end had finally come

Now I understand why the air was stale
Now I realise what the others could sense
It was the smell of death that mingled in the air that day
Waiting to steal our feeble lives to satisfy others

Now, when you bite into the soft flesh which once was my leg,
Remember how I lived
And remember how I died
Then maybe you'll think twice
Before taking a second bite

Third

FACTORY FARMING

By Ffion Haf

How do you farm a factory?
Is it left, free to roam
Through green carpet meadows,
The grass, pregnant with sleepy dew,
Tickled as the factory passes through,
It's charcoal chiney all agleam,
Frisking and frolicking this day anew;
All as if part of some glorious dream.

No.

You wouldn't harm a child;
A child's a chimp's a chicken.
A chicken in a basket.
No room to live.
No room to die.
The stale air thick with the stench of stagnant sisters.

A hangman's noose
Chokes the only light; a naked bulb;
A midnight sun
In soul devouring dark;
It's fickle flickering
Casts shadows of nightmare's monsters.
At leats the monsters mask the truth.

Every day.
Every day.
Every day.
The same.

Each meal a cocktail,
A pharmaceutical fallacy,
("Antibiotics make you better, right?")
Praying this one will be the last.
Death us the only judas here.

Synaesthetic cacophony
Of nothingness.
Smothered by fear,
Breathing terror,
In a world where the living litter the dead.

But that's just how they farm chickens.
How would you farm a factory?