Uncaged

The main vision of this passion project is to simply show a chicken. A chicken in its purest, lightest form and their capacity to love, feel, interact, and communicate. Their sensitivity to their environment. Their hyper awareness. Their goofy moments. Their intensity. Their complexity. Their thoughts. I want this film to bring awareness to all of that. It has the power to softly penetrate the hearts of those who allow it. As a whole, we are conditioned to subconsciously write chickens off as less than. Not everyone has the chance to see chickens as intimately as the way I have been able to. I wanted to capture that and share it. To start the conversation that question what we may be closed off to without even realizing. I look back and see how I truly had no idea what I was getting myself into when I brought Ari and Koda home and began filming, which provides an authentic sense of discovery along the way. I was going through intense shifts in my life throughout capturing this. You can see the changes, the details in the environment, the energetic ebbs and flows, the highs and lows. You can see my chickens getting me through it. Giving me light. Giving me life. Giving me focus. Giving me purpose. They are the consistent through line, while also always growing, changing, evolving, and moving forward. Caring for them and filming them helped me keep moving forward when I really otherwise did not know how else to navigate my life outside of this. This film lives in the details and is best seen in the third eye. It's meant to move in, like a Whisper, and stir your soul. In this quick, loud world, I wanted to offer something slow and quiet. I ask of anyone who watches it to allow yourself to follow along breath by breath. Moment by moment. When you feel your attention wandering, pull it back. See something. Surrender to the ever-changing, powerful stillness. When you do, it’s meant to become a transformative meditation. It is meant to be relaxed into. It’s meant to open you softly, and flutter around in your heart forever. I’ve spent countless hours with my chickens, most of the time not filming them. I started to sense them – the opening – the life in them. I started to see the Divine in them. I watch them play, communicate, argue, support, and protect each other. I watch them experience nature. Peck at it, scratch at it, roll around in it, jump for joy in it, breathe in it, observe it. It makes me incomparably happy to see them living as fully as I have been able to set their environment up to safely allow. One particularly hot, sunny day sitting out watching them romp around, I felt the piercing weight of the unrescued chickens all over the world in cages. Stripped of all of their rights. Stripped of everything it means to be a chicken. Everything I see my chickens doing, a majority of chickens don’t get to do. A true tragedy. All for what? A chicken wrap? Food that we throw away by the tons in waste? It should not be taken lightly; the price that is paid for the casual indulgences of the masses. I started to see a metaphor between us and chickens. More and more often, humans don’t live fully free and wild. A life less lived in nature, in our bodies, in our fully realized consciousnesses is normalized. How often do you walk barefoot? Romp in the grass? Let yourself feel the rain? Feel the heat? Feel your feelings, experience all of your emotions, see at the level we are capable of, create at the level we are capable of, dream at the level we are capable of? How often do most people know nature in their bones? Know it in their senses. Know what it feels like to be immersed in it, to make love to it, to commune with it? We are in buildings, cars, houses, on our devices, and not even touching the surface of the rapturous existence we were born to experience. We ourselves are the caged chickens. Perhaps watching my chickens delight in what it means to be alive for them can inspire humans who watch it to delight more in themselves. For we will never uncage the chickens if we cannot uncage ourselves. We cannot see the tragedy that we too willingly live ourselves. I personally consider my chickens rescues at this point in time because of the fact that anyone with five dollars can walk into a feed store and walk out with a living miracle in their hands to do with whatever they want. There are little to no regulations on keeping chickens. They can be raised and slaughtered, tossed around in a school classroom, or eaten by a backyard dog, which often happens and is written off as an accepted casualty. It’s a terror of a life many of these chickens are sentenced to. Most people also expect a hen when they buy from a feed store because the roosters have already been culled. If a roo slips through, his chances of being welcomed into a loving home are even more slim. Most people don’t know how to handle a rooster’s behavior even if they do want to give him a chance. I was horrified to read many forums of people posting about their roosters’ behavioral problems, and to see countless comments urging them to just go ahead and off their roo. Jokes were made about how much more delicious meat tastes because it’s revenge for all the issues the rooster caused. How chickens and roosters were never meant to be anything more than meat. I felt how much fear these people carry. To be so afraid to face behavior that they don’t understand from a being 1/10th their size to the point where they find joy in ending his life. When Ari, my roo, turned out to be a surprise rooster and started showing his adult rooster behavior, I did feel a nudge of intimidation. It wasn’t as easy as just walking somewhat mindlessly into a flock of allowing hens like I had imagined. I had grown up with chickens and had some exposure to rooster behavior, but most of this was still a learning curve for me. I decided I was going to face any fear and figure it out. To lean into Love and to keep seeing him as the little baby I knew him to be, while also respecting the mature, protective adult he had grown into. What I learned is that roosters simply demand next-level awareness. They don’t accept any misaligned energy. Nothing suspicious, unchecked, unmanaged, unaligned, unaware. They expect full acknowledgement. They expect full respect. They only allow good-intentioned, highly present, patient, brave, grounded, and worthy humans into their space and around those they protect. This is their gift. Stepping into those traits within yourself are only good traits to practice. Those who deny themselves that experience out of fear are simply denying the opportunity to grow into themselves. Roosters are highly noble, brave, sensitive, loving, affectionate, intuitive, and communicative. I know with certainty that Ari was meant to be my roo so he could be seen through this film. He was meant to be a voice for the roosters who are regularly unseen, unheard, misunderstood, mass murdered, overlooked, thrown out, and silenced. I ate a vegan diet for 5 years before eating my own hen’s eggs, which you see in the film. Something I really wanted to emphasize in this project is the significance of eating an egg. We mindlessly toss an egg into our cookies, use them for chemistry projects, pranks, and to excessively side with a triple stack and bacon. How often do you stop to feel what an egg holds within it? What an egg really is? What went into the creation of that egg? Who the being was whose body created that egg? Where that being is now? Was this being slaughtered after it passed peak egg production? Do you give thanks for it, extend a loving hand, give back? Or is it just a take/take dynamic? Once again denying ourselves a true connection and opening to what we take for granted day to day. Eggs are a life-giving force. And when an egg is taken from a hen, it is to be taken with full acknowledgment of that gift. People are moving in the right direction with their awareness around egg production and chickens as complex beings. I believe that deep down we are yearning for this knowing and Seeing, just as much as chickens are. It is the most aligned existence between human and chicken, and I see its pull calling us all home to it. Tending to my chickens every day has become a ritual for me that I can’t imagine my life without now. They have the capacity to benefit anyone who lets them. To pull us into the present, into nature, into ourselves. Lying in my hammock under my sweet, trusting chickens, this truth is solidified within me. By the end, I hope you will feel within you an unexplainable understanding of what chickens are and who they are. I invite you to fully open yourself up to seeing this glimpse into our world. I hope you feel their sweet bocking in your heart long after you watch. It is my greatest wish for everyone and every chicken to experience life fully seen, fully alive, and fully uncaged. And so it is.