Driving through the Canadian countryside, we came across a farm selling farm fresh eggs. They also offered free-range eggs at more than double the price of regular eggs. These, they claimed, were laid by hens raised without cages or other confinement housing, with access to the outdoors—weather permitting.

The Confusion of Labels

The labels on egg cartons in Canada are confusing and often misleading. Only a handful are certified by third-party agencies like SPCA Certified, which means the product comes from a farm that follows prescribed animal welfare standards, assessed annually by a trained inspector. Similarly, Certified Organic means the birds are raised on organic feed without growth hormones or antibiotics.

I am told that broiler chickens raised on growth hormones are in such terrible pain—their legs unable to support their own body weight—that we are actually doing them a favour when we slaughter them.

There are many uncertified but somewhat accepted labels, more fashion statements than guarantees. Labels like Free Range and Free-Run denote that hens can move around in open-concept barns, but they do not necessarily have access to the outdoors. Cage-Free and Pasture-Raised are also common. Labels such as Animal Friendly, Country Fresh, Naturally Raised, Non-Medicated, Raised Without Antibiotics, Raised Without Hormones, Vegetable-Fed, or Grain-Fed mean very little and are often misleading.

If there are no labels, or the label states Classic, Conventional, Regular, Farm-Fresh, or Natural, it means that the hens were kept in cages for almost their entire lives. These cages are about the size of a file cabinet drawer and can hold up to seven hens. It is estimated that 95% of eggs produced in Canada come from hens confined to such cages, where their movement is severely restricted and they are denied fundamental behavioural needs like wing-flapping, foraging, perching, and nesting.

The space provided for each hen varies but may be as little as 432 square centimetre (67 square inch) per bird—less than a standard-sized piece of notebook paper. Generally, four to six birds are housed in each cage, and cages are stacked vertically (hence the term battery) to allow thousands of hens to be housed in a single barn.

Canadian law mandates that: –

• Birds must be able to stand fully upright within the enclosure.
• Flooring must support the birds’ feet and not cause injuries or deformities.
• All birds must have access to at least two waterers.
• Automated feeding systems must minimise the risk of chicks getting caught.
• Tiers must be arranged to prevent droppings from falling directly on tiers below.
• The number of tiers must not exceed four.

Childhood Memories of Free-Range Poultry

In my childhood in Kerala, I was always fascinated by the brood my mother reared. The most dominant cock assumed the position of a rooster, leading the flock. There were many duels to establish supremacy, and the defeated cocks submitted to the victor. The rooster always pushed ahead of the females to have first pickings of the food while the hens stood back.

In the evenings, the brood returned and never entered the coop but perched on the tamarind tree behind it. The rooster perched on the top with the hens and other cocks below him—hence the idiom ruling the roost. The rooster was always on the lookout for intruders and predators, warning the brood about them. He also attacked and threw away intruders. The rooster crowed at the break of dawn, announcing to the world his presence and dominance. It also served as an alarm for our father, who woke us all up for morning prayers.

The rooster also crowed in response to a potential rival and, when being fed in the morning, used it as a way to assert that the food was his. It also served as a warning to other roosters in the neighbourhood not to trespass on his territory.

Our neighbour’s rooster was bigger and always bullied ours. In one such fight, I—then about four years old—barged between the two roosters in an attempt to protect ours. The neighbour’s rooster flew into a rage and pecked my forehead, leaving me bleeding and presenting me with a scar that became my identification mark. A mark of recognition! How would I be identified without the help of the neighbour’s rooster? A philosophical poser.

The Mating Ritual

The rooster mates with the hens during the day, like all birds. The mating ritual typically begins with a rooster performing a dance to attract his mate. He dips one wing, waves his colourful tail feathers, and dances around the hen in a circular pattern. If the hen is receptive, she crouches down and allows the rooster to mount her; otherwise, he forces himself upon her. For balance, he pecks on her comb atop her head. The entire mating lasts only a few seconds.

Both male and female chickens have one exterior sexual opening called a cloaca. When a rooster mounts a hen, he tucks his tail under the hen’s in a cloacal kiss, passing sperm to fertilise the egg. The sperm travels up the oviduct, where an egg is released every day. One mating can leave enough sperm to fertilise each egg for up to a week.

The End of the Rooster

The hens usually met their end by dying of old age, disease, or falling prey to intruders like foxes, dogs, or cats. Some got run over by vehicles on the road in front of the house. The rooster’s end, however, was another story. Amma would order us sons to butcher one to be the entrée for dinner when an uncle came calling. The cocks also met similar fates to celebrate Christmas and Easter. She indicated the cock to be butchered by its colour, and at night, one had to climb the tamarind tree with the skill of a leopard, locate the cock, and catch it. It was indeed a “surgical strike.” The operation was impossible during the day, as the cock always ran away.

We then had to butcher it and dip it in boiling water to de-feather it. Unlike the factory-reared chicken of today, these fowls, being free-range, carried no fat between their skin and muscles. Skinning them was impossible. The meat took longer to cook and was harder to bite into but always tasted much better. Similarly, the eggs from free-range hens tasted much better to my palate than the factory-produced eggs served at the Cadets’ Mess or the Officers’ Mess. It could be because these hens foraged on leaves, especially those of the herbal plants that grew abundantly around our house.

Hatching Chicks

Every other year, Amma hatched chicks to replenish the dwindling strength of her brood. She selected a healthy hen that had just entered her broody state and prepared a safe area in the storeroom, away from other hens and cats. A hen in a broody state does not lay eggs, eats hardly, remains in her nest, is very irritable, and assumes she is incubating eggs to hatch, even though there is nothing under her.

She then picked out a dozen eggs from the recent pile. She was a bit superstitious when it came to placing the eggs under the hen for incubation. She believed that anything she touched turned male—which, she claimed, was why we did not have a sister. I was presumed to be the lucky one because whenever I placed the eggs under the brooding hen, it mostly resulted in about eight females and four male chicks.

After I left home to join Sainik School, the job was given to my younger brother. It turned out that barring two, the rest of the chicks were all males. That possibly explains why he has two sons today!

The Life of the Chicks

After twenty-one days of incubation, the chicks hatched. The mother hen led them out, teaching them to eat, drink, and walk through the farm. In case of any attack from predators like cats, hawks, or crows, the mother hen tucked the chicks under her wings. She also attacked the intruder with her beak. The rooster immediately came to her rescue and joined the fight to repel the intruder. As children, we used to artificially colour the chicks red, orange, or pink to scare away predator birds.

The Annual Feast

The offering at the annual feast of our ancestral church, with St. George as the patron saint, was fowl. Many ladies in the area conditionally promised St. George that they would offer a fowl if at least ten of the dozen chicks survived. The responsibility to take care of the chicks rested with St. George—and if he failed, he lost a fowl during the annual feast!

After about six weeks of rearing the chicks, the mother hen either avoided them or pecked them away, as they had now become capable enough to take care of themselves. They now grew as free-range fowls to produce eggs or to end up as entrée at the family dinner.

The End of an Era

With rubber plantations replacing the pineapple and tapioca cultivation in our farmland, forage for the fowls reduced. A spurt in vehicular traffic on the road in front of our house made it unsafe for the birds. Easy availability of eggs and chicken meat at affordable prices without hassles made rearing fowls uneconomical. All these factors, along with my mother’s advancing age, contributed to the sad end of fowl rearing at our home—as also in much of rural Kerala.

At the very thought of those childhood days with the free-range brood around, I am flooded with a wave of nostalgia.

PS – Thanks to Late Veteran Colonel Baby Mathews – the idea for this article emanated from a telephonic conversation with him.