REALLY Crazy about Chickens!!!

Sometimes we fall so deeply in love with something that we don't know when we have gone off the deep end. I am sure my husband believes I fall into that category with the now 38 birds that we have, but I have seen evidence of far crazier folks than I!!!

One of our family members gave us a quirky DVD of a National Geographic special on chickens. The special has several vignettes on life with chickens. One involved a rural community whose peace and quiet was disturbed by one man raising 100 roosters, and the din it created. Lawsuits ensued, and the man was ordered by the courts to limit his rooster population to 5. We only have 2 roosters, and they are still figuring out how to crow!

The next segment was on a pragmatic woman in Maine (aren't they all supposed to be pragmatic in Maine?) that found one of her chickens frozen solid under the house, set it on a hot water bottle after seeing a flicker of life, and went so far as to give it MOUTH TO BEAK resuscitation. Okay, now, I would do that. I held one of my little bantams and stroked her as she "passed". At least that was before putting her on ice and shipping her off to UC Davis for a necropsy to figure out why my bantams were dying. (It was determined that the cause of death was Marek's disease, against which they have not been inoculated).

Another segment featured a kind of back to nature kind of guy. He and his family fed the chickens, fattened them up, then butchered and ate them. The father believed the kids should understand where food "comes from". I am a firm believer in this but can't bring myself to kill and eat my own birds. They have names!

One of my favorite "kooky" features was of a rather stout man in overalls doing rooster imitations. That was pretty classic to see. What was slightly un-nerving was how accurate he was!

What really took the cake was the VERY WHACKY woman from Florida. Thank GOD she was from Florida...everyone always assumes all of the nutty folks are in California! This is evidence that is NOT the case!!! Anyway, this crazy gal takes her chicken into the pool (I think the gal AND the chicken were naked but it was hard to tell!). After the swim in the pool the chicken gets its daily bath and then is fluffed dry with a blow dryer. I can almost understand that considering it is a very fluffy white silkie hen.

This gal drove the chicken around in her car in a little seat as though for tiny dogs, bought it burgers at the drive in and even fashioned little diapers so the chicken could be in the house without any unfortunate accidents.

I kept wanting to wake up Farmer Jeff, asleep next to me on the couch, and say...SEE, there are folks out there crazier about chickens than me!!! At least I don't try to make clothes for them (although I DID consider knitting them all sweaters in the winter) or kiss them, or bring them in to watch TV, as crazy Florida woman does. Ultimately, it was rather endearing.

It reminded me of when I was a little girl and I spied a sweet, little old lady in her car, sharing her ice cream cone, lick for lick, with her little Pommeranian dog. Both were intimately bonded with ice cream. I believe I saw that same bond with the Silkie and the woman in Florida. May all of us be so lucky!