Today (1 Dec. 2014) there was bad news again: another big poultry farm near my place had to kill all it’s feathered live stock.

Earlier this week I wrote a song about this subject. Yesterday I was triggered by a news item that the farmers can get compensation for the bird flu damage from a fund with a bizarre name: they called it the “Animal Health Fund”. I did some more research on modern chicken breeding and wrote an article in Dutch. The poultry industry has gone completely out of hand. Just a few fully automated large scale companies are busy ruining Europe’s smaller farms, exporting 450 million living chicken all over Europe. In Holland the number of poultry farms has reduced to nearly half the number of farms in 2000. The number of chickens has gone up with 20%. Approx. 100 biological farms have a stable 2% of the market during the last three years.

 

Click here for the article in Dutch: Diergezondheidsfonds

And here’s the protest song I wrote in the Irish traditional singing style:

Protest song against the modern poultry farming industry.

a) When I was born I was just a little chicken
Till somebody told me I was part of their production
I thought I had just a happy life before me
Till I realized I had a hundredthousand friends

a) Halfway the day all around me started moving
Now I know back then it was the line for cloacal sexing
How shall I say? Well, I had a little pimple
While I was a rooster sure they thought I was a hen

b) End of the line I fell down the lucky exit
Landed in a box, scanned a hen as I passed by
Stacked in a truck and transported to the airport
Only two days old, we were excited we could fly!

a) Landed in Cork I was one of fiftythousand
Unaware back then, I was different from the others
No need to tell you my youth was quite exciting
I had a balanced diet and the water pot was clean

a) But later on when my sisters started laying
I felt so ashamed cause I could never make production
Then came a man and he put me in his pocket
Twas a scary day, but in the end it was my best

b) It was the day that I left the poultry farm
Didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to all my friends
Next came the first time I met another rooster
He taught me how to crow at the dawning of the day

a) I told my friend I was born with hundredthousand
Then he told a story too horrific to believe it
Cat food they made of my fiftythousand brothers!
He said to me that that’s a common practice every day

b) He also taught me how to read the daily paper
Written by some people funded by the industry
Humans are told that they need this meat production
And the farms are hidden so that nobody can see

a) Next thing I learned was the Feed Conversion Ratio
After a week or six the broilers will grow slower
Food for the chickens will then be too expensive
They end up in the kill plant before they can grow old

b) That made me mad so I started a protest group
But I saw a mission of that kind would be in vain
So I decided to learn about explosives
A Chinese rooster taught me how to make a deadly vest

a) Now here I am, but I’m not so suicidal
You may call me chicken, but I try to be a bold one
I’m used to crow, so I’ll do the wake up calling
Maybe you can help me sing a song to turn the tide

b) So here’s a health to my fiftythousand brothers
And to my egg-laying sisters in the farm
Let’s put a halt to egg incubators
Children will love chickens that lay eggs behind the house!
Children will love chickens that lay eggs behind the house!