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I saw the Red Jungle Fowl in all its flame-feathered glory in the rainforests of southeast Asia. There were flocks of 50 or so, with birds of all ages scratching, preening, dust-bathing, and pecking at the ground. I must have startled them, for a few called out signals and with a mighty beating of wings the entire flock flew up to safety in the canopy.

Then men came and snared roosters to take back to their villages where they pitted them against each other and gambled on the outcome. Soon they captured other birds and began to keep them and breed them in their villages. These feisty gamebirds became popular and soon were traded throughout Asia. They were common in Islamic countries, and when Europe’s crusaders invaded the Levant they were delighted by the sport of their enemies. The crusaders trudged home, carrying chickens.

Time flew by again, to 1923, when Mrs. Wilmer Steele invented the factory farm in Delaware USA. I watched her lace some feed with vitamins A and D, which helped her keep a quite a number of chickens alive indoors over the winter. Word spread fast, and before long, everyone was following Steele’s example and raising big flocks on little labor. Soon chicken flesh was so cheap that everyone could have it.

Now in factories, chickens suffered like never before. There were epidemics of diseases and disorders. In dusty, stuffy buildings, entire flocks of birds died from influenza and other contagious diseases. Nightmarish scenes occurred: Some birds pecked others to death and ate their remains.

Nevertheless, the profits from mass chicken production were too enormous to even think of turning back. Factory farmers and scientists worked feverishly at reinventing the chicken; in time, they made it conform to the factory system. In short order, they stopped the nonsense of chicken cannibalism by burning and cutting off birds’ beaks. Their biggest project — the Manhattan project for chickens — was inventing a super-fast-growing bird. This pushed up profits even more because they got more chicken flesh on less feed.

They did not see that this also built suffering into chickens. The new factory chickens were barely able to stand or walk because their bodies — like turkeys’ — had outgrown their legs. I watched them crouch on manure-encrusted floors and scoot about on their bellies, propelling themselves as best they could with puny wings and legs. I saw their lost feathers and raw, blistered chests as they wallowed in filthy, wet litter.

Other birds suddenly jumped, squawked, and dropped dead. I heard one farmer call his the “flipover syndrome,” another called it “heart attack.” I overheard one of them say that this problem “is in the birds, they grow too fast these days.”

I saw chickens in even worse factories — in cages stacked in rows in long, dark, windowless buildings. These were egg laying hens, or “layers,” and they looked battered and exhausted. They were crammed 6 and 7- — sometimes 8 — birds to a cage, and the cages were lined up by the thousands in the gloom. I saw the chickens’ pale combs, chopped-off beaks, broken feathers, and brittle bones.

The building looked like a giant machine built to hold these hens and collect their eggs. And indeed it was. I saw a sole human worker there: he was roaming along the rows of cages, pulling out dead birds and dropping them into a cart. The survivors were in a living hell — the longest hell for any factory animal, for these hens were imprisoned this way for over a year.

Then, when they were too exhausted to lay eggs, the factory owner turned out the lights, turned off the feed and water lines, and let the hens suffer for about a week. Many birds died, of course. The survivors lost their feathers, but when the lights and feed returned, they began laying eggs all over again. Sadly, it seemed to me, they carried out nature’s plan in the most surreal and unnatural setting.

All these beautiful, powerful animals, who once were minding their own business in their home ranges, were taken and reduced to slaves by human beings. It was the original slavery, I thought — the granddaddy of all slavery. And it wasn’t enough to simply enslave them: the human beings had to take complete control of their bodies, sex and procreation to make them more productive, to make them better slaves — all to make the humans’ lives easier.

I felt so very sad — sad for the animals enslaved, sad for nature ruined. And I felt very sad for humanity that it had done such things. I cried so hard I woke up.

I sobbed some more as I came to my senses. Then I realized where I was: at Farm Sanctuary where animal slaves — a few anyway — have been rescued and allowed to live out their lives in freedom. I rose from my hay bed and went down to a field.

There all around me were cows and pigs, chickens and turkeys who once suffered on factory farms but now they were here, safe and comfortable. This might be the beginnings of a future, I thought. Joy rose up and seized my tears.