Chickens Quotes

“I dream of a better tomorrow. One where chickens can cross the road and their motives remain unquestioned.”
― Anonymous

“When some claim demarcation and “regulation”, others fancy “deregulation”, preferring foxes guarding the henhouse or chicken yards with free chickens and free foxes. Friend or foe, hen or fox, anyone can have a go. (“This far”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“He was transfixed at the sight of the lords and ladies of his realm running about like demented chickens.”
― Jonathan Stroud, The Amulet of Samarkand

“‎They are angry with me, because I know what I am." Said the little eagle. "How do you know that they are angry with you?" "Because, they despise me for wanting to soar, they only want me to peck at the dirt, looking for ants, with them. But I can't do that. I don't have chicken feet, I have eagle wings." "And what is so wrong with having eagle wings and no chicken feet?" Asked the old owl. "I'm not sure, that's what I'm trying to find out." "They hate you because you know that you are an eagle and they want you to think you are a chicken so that you will peck at the ground looking for ants and worms, so that you will never know that you are an eagle and always think yourself a chicken. Let them hate you, they will always be chickens, and you will always be an eagle. You must fly. You must soar." Said the old owl.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Shoving feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.”
― Brad Pitt

“I am a battery hen. I live in a cage so small I cannot stretch my wings. I am forced to stand night and day on a sloping wire mesh floor that painfully cuts into my feet. The cage walls tear my feathers, forming blood blisters that never heal. The air is so full of ammonia that my lungs hurt and my eyes burn and I think I am going blind. As soon as I was born, a man grabbed me and sheared off part of my beak with a hot iron, and my little brothers were thrown into trash bags as useless alive.

My mind is alert and my body is sensitive and I should have been richly feathered. In nature or even a farmyard I would have had sociable, cleansing dust baths with my flock mates, a need so strong that I perform 'vacuum' dust bathing on the wire floor of my cage. Free, I would have ranged my ancestral jungles and fields with my mates, devouring plants, earthworms, and insects from sunrise to dusk. I would have exercised my body and expressed my nature, and I would have given, and received, pleasure as a whole being. I am only a year old, but I am already a 'spent hen.' Humans, I wish I were dead, and soon I will be dead. Look for pieces of my wounded flesh wherever chicken pies and soups are sold.”
― Karen Davis

“Horses frighten me as much as chickens do,’ he said.

‘That is too bad, because lack of communication with horses has impeded human progress,’ said Abrenuncio. ‘If we ever broke down the barriers, we could produce the centaur.”
― Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“People don't know how chickens can turn on you, but they can -- just like mad dogs.”
― Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“Thus far, our responsibility for how we treat chickens and allow them to be treated in our culture is dismissed with blistering rhetoric designed to silence objection: “How the hell can you compare the feelings of a hen with those of a human being?” One answer is, by looking at her. It does not take special insight or credentials to see that a hen confined in a battery cage is suffering, or to imagine what her feelings must be compared with those of a hen ranging outside in the grass and sunlight. We are told that we humans are capable of knowing just about anything that we want to know—except, ironically, what it feels like to be one of our victims. We are told we are being “emotional” if we care about a chicken and grieve over a chicken’s plight. However, it is not “emotion” that is really under attack, but the vicarious emotions of pity, sympathy, compassion, sorrow, and indignity on behalf of the victim, a fellow creature—emotions that undermine business as usual. By contrast, such “manly” emotions as patriotism, pride, conquest, and mastery are encouraged.”
― Karen Davis, Prisoned Chickens Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry

“If I didn't start painting, I would have raised chickens.”
― Grandma Moses

“...that's the business model. How quickly can they be made to grow, how tightly can they be packed, how much or little can they eat, how sick can they get without dying. This isn't animal experimentation, where you can imagine some proportionate good at the other end of the suffering. This is what we feel like eating... Why doesn't a horny person have as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to killing and eating it? It's easy to dismiss that question but hard to respond to it... How riveting wold the sound of a tortured animal need to be to make you want to hear it that badly?”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

“...a tight hard little woman humorless as a chicken.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“It was a cold November day and she had dressed herself up in layers of cardigans and covered the whole lot with her old tweed coat, the one she might have used for feeding the chickens in.”
― Barbara Pym, Jane and Prudence

“Alvin smiled back, and kissed her. "People talk about fools counting chickens before they hatch. That's nothing. We name them.”
― Orson Scott Card, Alvin Journeyman

“More laying hens are slaughtered in the United States than cattle or pigs. Commercial laying hens are not bred for their flesh, but when their economic utility is over the still-young birds are trucked to the slaughterhouse and turned into meat products. In the process they are treated even more brutally than meat-type chickens because of their low market value. Their bones are very fragile from lack of exercise and from calcium depletion for heavy egg production, causing fragments to stick to the flesh during processing. The starvation practice known as forced molting results in beaded ribs that break easily at the slaughterhouse. Removal of food for several days before the hens are loaded onto the truck weakens their bones even more.

Currently, the U.S. egg industry and the American Veterinary Medical Association oppose humane slaughter legislation for laying hens on the basis that their low economic value does not justify the cost of 'humane slaughter' technology. The industry created the inhumane conditions that are invoked to rationalize further unaccountability and cruelty.”
― Karen Davis, Prisoned Chickens Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry

“Mr. False! No, don't start grabbing the chickens! Better off farmer with no chickens than a load of chickens with no farmer! Anyway, they'll probably float, or fly, or something!”
― Terry Pratchett, Snuff

“She kept her ears permanently tuned to the chicken voices outside, so knew immediately when a coyote had crept into the yard, and barreled screaming for the front door before the rest of us had a clue. (I don't know about the coyote, but I nearly needed CPR.) These hens owed their lives and eggs to Lily, there was no question.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

“Nancy taught two hens to help her sort flowers to make leis. She set them down by a basket of three colors of plastic flowers. One hen quickly pulled out all the red flowers, and another the white ones, leaving the pink flowers in the basket.”
― Karen Pryor, Lads Before the Wind: Diary of a Dolphin Trainer

“Well, speaking of supper, let's get it underway," she proposed. "Is there any meat in the house?"

"There's plenty of chickens in the chicken house out back," Sam responded. "I'll get Aaron to help me, and we'll kill a couple of roosters."

"Oh, my!" exclaimed Margaret. "Well, that will be fresh chicken, for sure!”
― Sarah Brazytis, The House on Harmony Street

“My grandpa lived in the First District area of Dixie County, FL. Near where State Road 349 and County Road 351 meet. I spent a lot of time there as a kid. Roaming over unplanted fields. Tossing maypops against the side of a sun-bleached barn. Chickens roamed freely over his land. Mornings began with a hunt to find eggs for breakfast. Every day was Easter back then. With sand and snakes.”
― Damon Thomas, Some Books Are Not For Sale

“A wolf is wearing a collar with a six-foot metal chain. Ten feet away, there is a chicken pen with chickens inside. The wolf manages to kill all the chickens. How?”
― R.P. Jones, Chrysalis

“The musicality makes this book soar, balancing rhymes with sounds that chickens would make while bringing imaginative fun to the barnyard. A perfect pick to illustrate the fun of reading for the very young." Kirkus Review”
― Mary Jo Huff

“This ability to distinguish biological movement appears to be highly conserved in the animal kingdom, having been demonstrated in species of mammals, birds, fish, and spiders. In fact, it might even be innate in some species. In one study, newborn chicks were placed on a runway with a video projected on either side, each depicting points of light with biological or nonbiological movement, similar to the ones in Blake’s experiment (see figure 10). The chicks showed a clear preference for the biological movement, even when it corresponded to a cat’s and not a chicken’s. What’s most interesting about this is that the chicks had been bred in the dark, and had not had any visual experience until that moment, which is evidence that this preference in them is innate and not learned. And, once again, it doesn’t manifest when the image is inverted and therefore doesn’t follow the law of gravity.”
― Susana Monsó, Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death

“One spring day in particular, when flowers were just blooming and the breeze was calm, one of our hellblazers broke into the house and flew around hysterically, scorching the place. Roasted Chicken---named by a nine-year-old with witty humor, as all the chickens were named after chicken entrees--- wreaked havoc. The difference between a regular chicken and a hellblazer is the latter spits flames. And this mother-clucking flock had been rescued from an underground fighting ring--- they were feisty.”
― Taylor Epperson, Second Time's a Charm

“Hellblazers: Chicken Soup, Chicken Noodle, Roasted Chicken, Fried Chicken, Chicken Broth, Chicken Sandwich, Spicy Chicken Sandwich, Chicken and Waffles, approximately seven to ten years old, VERY SENSITIVE AND RUDE/ saved from illegal fighting pits. They were literal hell.”
― Taylor Epperson, Second Time's a Charm

“Pigs are tougher than rats
Tougher than chickens too”
― Michael Casey, Obscenities

“I know
it’s not always this way. The gun goes off
eventually. One night the latch will fail to catch
or a hinge will rust through, and the fox will bring
terror and death, as foxes do. Every story ends
with a corpse. But, Jessica, it’s not Act Three yet.
My neighbor, the chickens, the fox, you, me —
we love what we love for as long as we can.”
― K.T. Landon

“King Sophytes (Punjab, 5th century BCE) clearly understood that nothing commands respect like a bird that starts its day screaming at the sun.”
― Raymond A. Anderson, Why did the Chicken Cross the Road?: A Student's and Intellectual's Guide and Toilet Companion

“Dinosaurs are extinct, but chickens won evolution’s long game. Since the 1950s, the average broiler has grown so rapidly that, at this rate, they’ll reach T-rex proportions in a few centuries. We can only hope they don’t harbour grudges.”
― Raymond A. Anderson, Why did the Chicken Cross the Road?: A Student's and Intellectual's Guide and Toilet Companion

“There are 'quips and quillets' which seem actual conundrums, but yet are none. Of such is this: 'Why does a chicken cross the street?'] Are you 'out of town?' Do you 'give it up?' Well, then: 'Because it wants to get on the other side!' [March 1847]”
― Knickerbocker, The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine. Vol. XVII.