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Battery chickens

Now battery chickens. This is an industry jargon meaning chickens are raised in the same way and en masse.

Battery refers not the AA batteries you insert in your digital camera to give it electricity but suggests many of the same things. A battery of soldiers, for example, refers to a group of soldiers wearing the same uniform.

For another example, you’ve raised three questions from reading one article, that’s a battery of questions right there.

Anyways, battery chickens are raised in the small cages you see in any modern chicken farm. The cages are indeed called battery cages because they are of the same small uniform size, so small that the chickens within can barely shift round. Indeed this style of farming is called battery farming aimed at making most efficient use of limited space to ensure the greatest profit margins.

Profit margins, of all things.

Now, the interesting part, which you didn’t ask but you could have. “Like battery chickens, the odd surprise is good for them.” What does that mean?

It means change is good. If you lead a monotonous prison life such as that of the battery chickens, you’d love a change of scene any time. Or if you are a prisoner, political or criminal, you would love to step outside the cell, walk in the yard just for an occasional breath of fresh air.

My apologies, by the way, for comparing the battery chickens to human prisoners. My apologies are to the chickens, of course. Human prisoners when they’re jailed can usually be faulted for some wrongdoing. Even political prisoners have faults, too, at the very least for not having known better. But the chickens are innocent through and through and their small cages speak volumes about capitalism and human greed in general.