Where Has the Little Red Hen Gone?
Aug 12th, 2009 | By Richard Marmo | Category: Featured, Morning Whiskey
MISSING IN ACTION: The Little Red Hen.
SPECIES: Chicken.
SUB-SPECIES: Rhode Island Red.
LOCATION: Golden Books in literature. Small towns, farms and ranches in real life.
Linda Brady Traynham’s recent missive on the chicken mess and the coming dismantling of chicken farming, if a Federal lawsuit is successful, will also lead to the demise of a staple in legend and fact. The Little Red Hen.
You disagree? Then follow me down a long and winding path that leads to an inescapable conclusion. In the beginning, at least in America, the Little Red Hen was used in reading primers as a means of teaching a clear morality. For all the details, take a look at this Wikipedia entry that can be found here.
The same article will describe how a delightful, educational, entertaining and moralistic story has been corrupted by the big O’s administration into evil resistance. Now instead of illustrating how those who refuse to work should not share the bounty of those who do, morality has flipped 180 degrees.
Today, the Little Red Hen is demonized as being unfair because she doesn’t share her bounty. The new morality is that everyone receives an equal share, whether they earned it or not. Removes any incentive to work, doesn’t it? And why should you work since everyone will be equally poor.
What does all of the above have to do with the lawsuit over chicken mess…excrement if you prefer, as well as other colorful, descriptive terms that are best not used in this space…that Linda discussed? Plenty, particularly where the live action Little Red Hen is concerned.
Rhode Island Red chickens, which is what the Little Red Hen is, have been common sights in small towns, farms and ranches all over this country. If you’ve never seen a Rhode Island Red rooster perched on a fence, flapping his wings and crowing for all he’s worth to announce the dawn of a new day, it’s a sight to behold. He crows for other reasons too, but that’s a whole other story.
But back to the Hen. She struts around, scratching in the ground, exposing all sorts of disgusting little things that she eats. Through various biological processes and the attention of a passing rooster, she eventually produces eggs which, when warmed, hatch into fuzzy little baby chicks that she then protects until they grow up.
One of the cutest sights you’ll ever see, at least on a farm or ranch, is a mother hen followed by her brood of baby chicks. Wherever she goes, they follow, just as surely as if they were tied to her by the feathered version of apron strings. The Hen cares about her chicks, too, to the point of sacrificing her life if a fox or skunk raids the hen house. It might not stop the raiders from including those chicks on their dinner menu, but the Hen will darn sure die trying to prevent it.
It’s not just varmints that inspires such fatal protection. Storms are another threat. In that case, you’ll hear the Hen calling to her chicks while spreading her wings wide. The chicks run to her for protection, snuggling close to her body under those sheltering wings. In the event of an ordinary storm or even a severe thunderstorm, the Hen endures nothing more than a bath and the chicks emerge warm, fluffy and dry. But if those storms carry hail with it, the Hen may yet again make the supreme sacrifice to protect her chicks.
There are times, though, when that sacrifice occurs thru ignorance or accident. Back around 1912 or 1913, on a farm in Mississippi, my mother –- who was seven or eight at the time — was told to put a chicken under a washtub to protect it from developing storms. While she did as she was instructed, what she didn’t do was to place a stick, rock or piece of wood under the edge of the washtub so the chicken could breathe. No one told her that was necessary.
When the storm was over and the washtub raised, the Hen was — as you have already guessed — dead, the innocent victim of a dastardly fowl deed.
My Grandmother did the only practical thing. After plucking and cleaning the recently deceased Hen, she fried it for dinner whereupon it was enjoyed by all. Except my mother. Since she had named the bird and basically made it into a pet, there was no way she was gonna eat it. That’d be like eating family!
Eventually, at the end of her egglaying/breeding days, the Hen winds up as the basis of that delectable Southern Fried Chicken…or Chicken Cacciatorre…or any of dozens of other ways to turn chicken into a mouthwatering meal.
Unfortunately, all of those epicurean delights that frequently come courtesy of the Little Red Hen and her feathered relatives may soon become a rare addition to the dinner table. The main cause of this will be the scarcity of chickens in the grocery store. If Pilgrim’s Pride and others aren’t put out of business entirely, I shudder to think how high the prices may eventually go. All because of a lawsuit over chicken mess that is, literally, nothing to crow about.
May the Little Red Hen rest in peace. My dining table will miss her.
Regards,
Richard Marmo
August 12, 2009
for the uninformed, your cutesy little story lacks a few things, like facts. The chickenthat you eat is debeaked at birth. That means they cut the beaks off at birth so they can’t peck each other to death when they are crammed together in cages or chicken houses.Your fried chicken has not had a happy, long, productive life. They are are about 60 days old when slaughtered. http://www.goveg.com/factoryfarming_chickens.asp
I know of one case where, because of an ice storm, the chickens were not taken out of the house when scheduled……4 days past slaughter date, they were so heavy , because of the super feed, their legs were breaking…no bone strength. The egg layers wind up in your soup, after they burn out, and they cut the cancers off. enjoy your chicken.. I raise my own for eggs, they make great pets and bug eliminators. I’m a vegetarian.
“I’m a vegetarian.”
Talk about an unnecessary sentence. Animal chauvinists never vary from the party line.
Dear Oregon Hiker:
Chickens are frequently debeaked, but not at “birth.” (Chickens aren’t born, they are hatched.) However, that does not mean that their “noses” are cut off; it merely means that the very tip is blunted because you do have one fact in your possession: chickens do, indeed, peck each other to death when conditions are right. Crowded conditions are NOT the cause. Chickens are basically little Nazi fowl who sense that any damaged bird is a danger to the flock. If a chick is injured in any way the others will, indeed, peck him to death if he is not removed until he heals. Chicks in particular LIKE to huddle together, and if care is not taken they pile up and a lot die from lack of oxygen.
It is usual for some of the chicks to be too frail to survive. At one day old, the others know which ones will not, and they will surround the weakling and smother him. When we hatch out we watch the chicks very carefully and separate them. In some cases the little birds will survive if given time alone.
I doubt the story about chickens so heavy their bones broke under their weight, and it does seem unlikely that a mere four days would be sufficient to bring about that condition.
Hurrah to you for being a vegeterian of doubtless superior moral convictions, but is it quite fair to enslave chickens to serve as bug destroyers, or to keep them captive from your own selfish desire for companionship? Turn those chickens loose, hiker, and let them return to the wild. You know it is the right thing to do, and just because they would be eaten by mountain lions, bears, hawks, or skunks, or run over by cars, does not free you from your obvious moral obligations to fellow creatures. Lions have to eat, too.
As for the “gun?” Have you ever even been in the same room with one? I doubt that. It is always possible that someone with a concealed carry license was there, of course, and you survived unscathed.
Great grief. The only thing wrong with Richard Marmo’s tale is that he should have taken it farther.
[...] ‘Today, the Little Red Hen is demonized as being unfair because she doesn’t share her bounty. The new morality is that everyone receives an equal share, whether they earned it or not. Removes any incentive to work, doesn’t it? And why should you work since everyone will be equally poor.’ [...]
[...] This post was Twitted by AgoraFinancial [...]
Oregon Hiker,
It is apparent that your knowledge regarding chickens is more than a little deficient, particularly where the operation of large chicken production farms is concerned. What I find interesting in your little tirade is that the website you refer to belongs to PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). For the uninitiated, these are the same people who…at one point in time…went so far as to propose covering animal’s genital areas with clothing (Can you imagine the untapped market for equine boxer shorts?) so that the animals wouldn’t be embarassed by their nudity.
You also appear to have zero knowledge of what is known as ‘free range chickens’, though your feathered pets appear to live in just such a manner. Free range chickens, which is what you have on ordinary working farms and ranches (I am not discussing massive agribusiness operations), enjoy life, lay eggs wherever they choose, hens protect their brood while the humans who own the farm or ranch do their best to protect the chickens.
When the time comes for the chicken to become dinner, they are humanely and quickly killed. But until that time comes, they have literally lived the chicken version of the Life of Riley. In case you’re unfamiliar with that phrase, the Life of Riley was a very good situation comedy of the 1950s that starred William Bendix.
On the other hand, Rancher Lady did bring up a valid point. If you feel that strongly about the way chickens are treated, you do have a moral obligation to allow your chickens to return to the wild, unfettered by the rancid taint of civilization. There they will be free…free to live a short and violent life before succumbing to the law of the jungle (or wilderness), providing proper protein for the predator who is on the next higher rung of the food chain. How can you object to such a lifestyle for your feathered friends? After all, it’s only nature in action.
Hiker,
I dont agree with all your statements. There are no super feeds, its just a balanced diet, nothing magical about that. The antibiotics just suppress bacteria which reduces feed efficiency, you would be lucky to increase rate of gain by 5% with them. Chickens just grow that fast when provided feed that is balanced. Cutting of beaks is just basic humane animal husbandry. Chickens (and other animals) do not have a sense of right and wrong, compassion or rational thought. They have instincts: self preservation and preservation of their off spring. Thats it, cutting off their beaks is the most humane thing a farmer can do. I have seen what chickens can do when raised outside in the fresh air, with plenty of food and water and space. They are cruel in their treatment of the weak. I do agree that large agribuisness has overstepped its bounds. We would all be better off if we took a page out of your book and raised our own food or at least purchased our chickens from a local farmer that raised them to our specifications if that is what we so desire. I commend you on the strength of your convictions and actually doing something about it personally rather than just complaining.
Rancher Lady is a giant fraud! She doesn’t actually eat any of the chickens she raises! She has been “fattening” captured wild hogs for six months and they have never even been threatened with becoming sausage.
As you well know we will just shift the business south of the border, of course where regulatory and health controls are minimal and labor is cheaper, and then the govenment will subsidize the grain, then import processed chicken. Once again adding to the unemployment roles and devestating small businesses in America all for our own good. I mean it would take a rocket scientist to develop alternative uses for the natural fertilizers to be put to profitable uses, and it’s not like soils are being depleated, or that oil based fertilizers can be utilized since there is a abundance of oil, nobody ever heard of peak oil, or the benifits of recycled refuse that if applied with reasonable caution and awarness can be benificial and not harmful. It’s like everything one bad apple causes an avalanche of destruction to a whole barrle of good apples, the bad apple being politicians and lawyers.
Old man River! You owe me an article! Great response to the Hiker, although he will probably never believe that all the little electric guillotine does is blunt the tips and the chicks are running around fine within moments.
Wahoo, Steve! One of our projects we’ll get to eventually is building rolling pens so that the chickens are protected from hawks during the day and from skunks, ‘possums, and raccoons at night. That way they can have constant access to new areas teeming with luscious tidbits and the land will be fertilized lightly in rotation.
Hi Linda! I havent forgotten, just been busy lately, work and vacations. Actually had a weekend trip to the great state of Texas, nice place. Chicken litter is one of the best “natural” fertilizers. I have seen the rolling chicken coops used and they seem to work great.
Shame on you, Erik, for being in Texas and not saying so before you came. Shucks, we’re only a hundred miles from Houston, Austin, and Waco, and less than 200 from D/FW and San Antonio…
Has your factory started up again? Talk to you later, good to hear from you. Linda