Chicks and Weeds: Why Natural Chicken Keeping is an oxymoron

I got chickens - and I wanted to raise them naturally, allowing them their chickenness - doing what chickens do - and without man-made chemicals or GMO seeds in their food - for their optimal health and chicken happiness.

And then I found out: there is no way of natural chicken keeping, not in the true meaning of the word "natural".

"Natural" and "Keeping" are essentially not compatible - if you consider natural being a state where is bird is free to be a bird the way nature intended.

Omnivorous natural chickens foraging for food do not depend on supplemental high protein feed because they were not bred as layers to lay eggs all year long. They raise a clutch of chicks a year in the spring.
Roosters are expressing their territorial nature without having been bred for extra aggressiveness for used in cock fighting. They are not killed for any reason other than natural.
Nature does the culling through providing the weak and old as well as a certain number of young as food to predators.

So - already, even in the most "natural" of circumstances, any "keeping" of chickens is already removed from natural. - it is an oxymoron.

So what is the potential chicken enthusiast to do?

The reason natural chicken keeping is nonetheless something to promote is because it is leading to healthy happy chicken lives as close to natural as possible. The extremes of abuse and suffering chickens are dealt at the hands of man in the commercial slavery they are being kept...for money and greed - is horrible. But that is another blog post.

The vegans have a certain stance: it is never ethically ok to enslave a sentient being for one's own purpose. The question: Is it EVER ok to keep captive a chicken or any other animal captive for one's own purpose, whether for one's pleasure, entertainment, research, food or garden help? Their answer is NO.

But hey - what if the chickens as a species felt it was a good deal - because look at the way they got around to spread all over the world - for the price of providing food for those who keep them...and how many more of them got to experience life on earth than would otherwise never had a chance to.

Was there really never a chicken that would have chosen human's company for some extra free food and shelter from predators?

I can't know for sure - but I DO make this stand here:

IF you decide to keep chickens - don't close your eyes and heart to the fact that if you order female chicks from a sexed run so you can enjoy healthy eggs from happy chickens - the male brothers of your beloved birds got chopped up alive or suffocated to death.

IF you keep chickens, give them a good life in a natural environment, which means enough space, outside foraging time so they can scratch and peck and dust bathe and keep themselves and the flock healthy. When it comes time to cull any roosters of your straight run, have a beautiful space prepared and learn to do it humanely.
You'll have healthy happy birds, a peaceful transition for any you need to kill - and you'll be able to sleep better if you have a conscience.

Don't get fooled or lulled by words like "culling" or "harvesting", it is the taking of a life, no matter what you call it.It might get easier - but it may never be easy.

Be aware that "extra roosters" don't have ANY rights in human society anywhere. In some cases ANY rooster is "extra".

We are taught to accept car horns, boombox music, sirens at all hours of the night and blasting advertisement as background noise, but the "natural" rooster song is dealt the blow of death as it stands today.

Commercial chicken keeping as was developed in the last century is not worthy being called anything other than than barbaric, and is harmful on many many levels. ...but such is many man's greed and immorality.

And I do understand that there are "humans" who don't think anything of it to torture and abuse chickens in that way, who see nothing wrong with it their entire lives.. - and I do wonder also if they do have an individual soul...or what section of the universe they come from - or rather - where I come from that is bothers me that much.