This piece has seven, male, ten day old chicks playing on a metal bed with a thick mattress made of wood wool and feathers. The piece represents the naivety of those who purchase battery eggs, poultry for meat and down filled bedding and clothing without knowing what they are buying into.
They play in the feathers of a bird who has suffered at the hands of an industry which serves our comfort. The bed symbolising the archetypal image of comfort, safety and luxury. Comfort is something these birds were never able to feel.
This piece is not intended as a protest it is merely intended to raise awareness and inform.
Key:
Stuffing sequence and any damage found upon defrosting:
- Chick one: 10.12.10 – no signs of damage
- Chick two: 18.12.10 – burst gut
- Chick three: 19.12.10 – broken leg
- Chick four: 31.12.10 – beak detached from skull, abrasions, to the wing
- Chick five: 01.01.11 – laceration on the wing
- Chick six: 02.01.11 – no signs of damage
- Chick seven: 11.01.11 – no signs of damage
Chicks are sold in packs of ten upwards, frozen immediately after death and sold in pet shops for food for birds of prey and reptiles. There is a huge amount information on how chicks are farmed for the meat and egg industry.
Male chicks are of no use as they will not grow enough to be used for meat as they hail from a special breed created just to produce the greatest egg yield though not to hold body mass, therefore they are disposed of after just one day of life.
Each year, approximately 30 million day-old male chicks are ‘disposed of’.
They are sorted using conveyor belt systems, and either sent live into a grinder or put in sacks or crates and taken to be gassed.
Female chickens they will go onto a life of egg production, after having their beaks sliced off by a machine. They will spend the rest of their short lives in either a barn, a battery cage or free-range, which effectively is an overcrowded barn with some access to outdoor space in general.
One kilo of eggs requires 3 kilos of grain (in the form of chicken feed) to produce. The conversion of crops by farm animals into food for humans is grossly inefficient. It is not only food (grain) that is wasted, each battery egg takes approximately 180 litres of water to produce. Consider the volumes of water human beings use in developing countries: in India, for example, the poorest use an average of only 10 litres of water each per day (O’Brien, 1998).
It took around five hours to complete each bird. I tried to give each bird it’s own personality which seemed to evolve organically as I worked on them, as obviously each bird like all animals do have their own personality – even chickens.