A Chicken Love Song

I think I revealed most of my chicken history in this show. It is an ongoing saga, though I am much more in control of my crazy love for chickens. I finally recycled all my old hatchery catalogs. Okay that’s not quite true as I kept one Murray McMurray catalog…just for reference…really. Oh how I love to look at the pictures – almost always paintings, by the way – of the different breeds in those catalogs. And no, I do not read them at night under the covers with a flashlight. That’s frowned upon. But oh my gosh, Delawares, Wyandottes, Polish, Cornish and Buff Orpingtons! You know what I’m talking about!

Anyway the song was inspired several years ago when a friend told me she fed her chickens the garden huckleberries (Solanum melanocerasum) she grew in her garden and I thought, I bet those chickens love her and would do anything for her.

The photo is mine. Those are some Ameraucana chicks that I purchased last spring. I couldn’t help myself!  But anyway, listen, if you too like chickens and would like to add a book about the history of chickens to the shelf where you keep your “raising chickens the right way” books and your hatchery catalogs, I recommend Why Did the Chicken Cross the World by Andrew Lawler.