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Perhaps she's laid too many eggs
Or maybe there's too much weight on her scally legs.
Regardless, there comes a time to thin the flock
And remove those that no longer add to the stock.
Spent Hens, know when their time is up
They crowd together in their coop.
Hoping to escape notice
When the catcher comes to make his choice.
Or else they become most bold,
Acting as if they're young, not old.
They cackle - to draw attention
To what they have done in convention.
Having laid an egg, they sing their praise
Cackling loudly their voices, raise
Drowning out the hubbub of the pen,
The Building they're sheltered in.
Listen now; as some begin to crow(1)
Having a hormone change down below.
And they begin to think like men
Ranging free in the public pen.
Or else, they're broody and gather around them
The small and helpless, as a seraphim.
Clucking as if counting their number
It's actually to alert them to plunder.
Looking for a juicy worm or tidbit
Offered to the chicks if it's to their larder, unfit.
As has long before been known
When they scratch, it's for their own
.
An irate hen that knows no bounds
To lash out when enraged by hounds.
With feathers ruffled and in an angry voice
Attack, Attack, she knows no other choice.
When cornered in the holding pen
Foxes, possums, wild dogs and other men
Create pandemonium on the roost
Feathers fly escaping truth.
She flies wildly about night or day
Raising feathers in the fray
Lashing out with spurs that often go unnoted
Until the victim's blood is spurted.
She'll abandon her little brood and wait
Seeking shelter in a higher estate.
Above the carnage down below
She's above it all, don't you know.
The ones who clean up her private cage
Know that her droppings smell with age.
And as the pile begins to grow,
Something must be done to stop the flow.
It is finally decided with grave thought and wisdom
That this Spent Hen they must abandon
How to remove her in such a way
That other hens aren't alarmed, in the fray.
For sure, the cacophony they would raise
Far exceeds the rooster's praise.
Anyway, he's looking to the younger chicks
Perhaps a pair will be his pick.
To share his lofty roost and meanders
They're enchanted by his golden feathers.
But the Spent Hen on the Hill
Will never forgive her wayward Bill.
She'll try to rod-him from the coop
So she's protected from the catcher's hook.
But sly chanticleer that he be
He'll clinton (escape) to a nearby tree.
Leaving her to be Spent alone
For mistakes past, to atone
With clipped wings to keep her down
So he can be cock-of-the-town.
She'll not find a home in some pc fable
And, she's far too tough for the dining table
So she'll be ground-up and cooked like all her kin.
It's a process called "renderin"
She'll yield products not to our liking
But it's the ultimate argument for recycling.
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Layers are kept in pens where they live out their lives producing on average an egg a day for some two hundred or so days. Then if they are white leghorns, they will be either killed and sent to a landfill, or ground-up and rendered into animal food, perhaps returning as part of the diet for her sisters that now occupy her space in the wire cages. If she be one of the meaty breeds producing eggs that will become the fryers and broilers which we are familiar with in the supermarkets, her fate may have an extra twist. Because she is so big and tough, her meat is in demand for adding to canned soups and the like. Those square like lumps in soup prove that the meat is indestructible, passing easily through processing to yield a product that is indigestible.
(1) Maggie Wortham had this to say,
"A Whistling Girl and a
Crowing Hen come to a bad end."
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