In the last few days, the unmistakable stench of ammonia rich chicken shit has been getting right up my nose. I am not aware of any battery houses in the immediate area although they may well exist. I can only assume that somewhere has been doing a clean out of the chicken house and the mess has been spread on a neighbouring field. Of all the slurry type stuff that’s spread on fields, chicken is possibly the worst imaginable smell. Chickens should be free range for this reason alone in order that a mountain of excrement does not build up in any one place.
It takes me back to the days of working in a Greek egg factory in intense heat and dust with that same stench in my nostrils. Each and every day the cages had to be patrolled to check for dead hens and more often than not, rigor mortis had set in requiring the breaking of wings and legs in order to get them out of the tiny cage they shared with four others. I can only imagine the stress this must have caused the ones still alive. Rows upon rows of cages built over a pit with a huge scoop thing that trundled the shit the length of the house and out a door at the end where it plopped nicely into a waiting truck. Until the scoop moved the stuff, the birds had no choice but to breathe in the fumes. When they layed an egg it rolled out of the cage and onto a conveyor belt from which the eggs were packed twice a day.
What a horrible way to produce food.
