Losing Louise
Cancer is terrible in every species
In 1910 a Long Island farmer brought a chicken into a laboratory at Rockefeller University. The barred Plymouth Rock hen had a large and obvious tumor and was routed to the laboratory for cancer research. At the time, the lab was headed by a young pathologist named Peyton Rous. Dr. Rous biopsied the hen’s tumor which he diagnosed as a sarcoma and decided to experiment. First he injected the cancerous material directly into other chickens of the same breed, some of whom also developed sarcomas (other breeds and bird species were unaffected). Dr. Rous was curious. He took the tumor, ground it up, and filtered it multiple times until all cancer cells were gone. Then he injected this mixture into a group of healthy hens—apparently supplied by the original farmer. Some of them developed the same form of cancer too. This meant something smaller than a cell was spreading it. Dr. Rous tried to play down his findings in the resulting paper but what he’d discovered was that cancer could be caused by a virus. The medical establishment didn’t know what to do with Dr. Rous’ research for a long time—the first virus had only been found in 1892—but in 1966 Peyton Rous was given a Nobel Prize for his discovery.
Chickens have been central to a lot of cancer research. They’re used as experimental models for ovarian cancer because their frequent egg laying has made them prone to spontaneously developing ovarian cancer like humans. Earlier this year, one of my rescue hens, Thelma, died from ovarian cancer. Yesterday, my other rescue, Louise, died from Avian sarcoma leukosis virus—another virus that causes cancer in chickens. So cancer is something I’ve been thinking about a lot. There’s been hope on and off that we could vaccinate chickens against ASLV like we do for the fowl disease Merek’s or HPV in humans but so far it hasn’t amounted to anything. I’d only heard of ASLV in passing until it killed Louise.
She’d looked healthy on the outside. Even when the vet did a necropsy (the animal version of an autopsy), the doctor mentioned that she could see Louise had been eating and drinking and digesting well—both atypical for hens with the disease. A layer further there were the tell-tale signs of leukosis. Her insides were covered in tumors that looked almost like small white polka dots.
The virus doesn’t survive well and only travels through mating, in eggs laid by an infected hen, or by bites from mites or flies. In other words, it’s random chance that Louise was the one who got it. I always expected her to die from something specific to her upbringing on a battery farm but in the end it was something that could happen to any chicken anywhere. Louise spent her last week enjoying early fall and the end of grape season. Every time I let her out of the coop, she beelined for the grape vines and I’d find her jumping for clusters, her beak sticky with juice. She took a lot of dust baths and naps in the sun. If you’re a chicken who is going to die, I suppose you may as well skip winter.
I knew I didn’t have long with Louise when I got her. She was already two years old when she was rescued from the battery farm where she’d spent her life thus far. She was between four and five years old when she died. Bred to lay as many eggs as possible, hens of her breed don’t live long. They have problems. But Louise had bad luck too. Just a few months ago, she found a piece of an old, galvanized nail or wire that gave her zinc poisoning. She went blind for a few days and, somehow, recovered. Chickens can be surprisingly resilient. But when I found her underneath the coop feeder yesterday morning—the same place Thelma went to die—I knew it was probably the end.
I’ve been reading the new book Good Grief: On Loving Pets, Here and Hereafter by E.B. Bartels in which she writes, “When we open our hearts to animals, death is the inevitable price.” Recently someone asked me what the worst part of chicken keeping was and I’d said rats because they’d been on my mind lately but really it’s the fact that chickens die, often much earlier than I’d like. Every time it hurts like a knife in my stomach. But I’ve never once thought about not keeping them anymore because of it. Their sometimes short time in my life is more than made up for by how wonderful they are. So I keep bringing them home even knowing I’ll eventually be saying goodbye. Just the day before Louise left us, I brought home two new hens. The cycle continues. I plan to rescue more hens too. After Thelma and Louise, it doesn’t feel right to have a flock without them.
Losing Louise felt like the end of an era. When Thelma died, I’d thought, “At least there’s still Louise.” Now, without rescues at all, it feels like something’s missing. I miss their particular brand of mischief like trying to sneak out of the coop door when I opened it or lagging to come in after they’d been free ranging. It feels strange not to have a red hen in my flock anymore. Strange, even, to be free of the worry that our time together was limited.
Because they’d had such a long journey to become the hens they were at the end, I’d celebrate their wins in a way that didn’t feel necessary with the rest of the flock. Every good day they had felt like an apology for the bad days that came before them. I can only be glad that by the time they died, they’d both had more time with me than they’d lived in a cage on a farm. They’d lived well, my Thelma and Louise, when they finally had space to live a real life. But even if they’d lived one or two or three years longer, I still don’t think it would have felt like enough. It never does with the ones we love.
News from the Coop
For once some of the news from the coop is actually coop related in that we are in the process of getting a new coop built. Hopefully it’ll give the girls more room if they have to go on flock-down again from avian flu (which still hasn’t gone away). It’ll also just be cute and hopefully extremely predator and rodent proof, the dream of every chicken keeper. Once it’s built I’ll probably be adding some more hens to the flock too. I already have a list going but now finding more ex-battery hen rescues is at the top of it.
Having the two new girls I brought home on Sunday makes the flock feel a little less small without Louise, though she had such a big personality and I’m still getting to know Blanche and Rose. Chickens can’t read but I’d hoped Louise would at least make it until my book, Under the Henfluence, comes out in March. It didn’t quite work out that way. She and Thelma are both featured prominently and I’m glad people will at least get the chance to know them—and rescue hens like them—through the book. Of course, I’d rather still have Thelma and Louise.
There will be more book news in the next newsletter. Stay tuned.
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-Tove
Wonderful tribute to Miss Louise. She now joins her sister in exbatt heaven!!