“Regard it just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral” – Frank Lloyd Wright
It might be difficult to generate much sentiment for my subject, so I’m content to write for myself, and perhaps a few who choose to come along for the ride. For perspective, my early journey and fortunes were inexorably intertwined with chickens, dating back to when some breeds were as tall as I was. An only child, I valued them in perhaps an unusual way.
While roaming the chicken house, they were my friends; curious about me, following me around, looking me over out of one eye and then the other, and speaking gently as I passed by. We were comfortable with one another, with simple expectations and freedom to be ourselves.
In the 1940’s Red Rock Poultry Farm was the largest in Pennsylvania, and perhaps in most of the Northeast. It was comprised of one massive four-story barn (50’ by 300’, with 2 stories underground), and two smaller multi-storied barns for laying hens. Along the dirt lane through the property were a dozen or more ‘range shelters’ for baby chicks, and a large single-story enclosure for turkeys.
I don’t know the exact number of birds in this entire operation, but I remember my folks having to ‘catch and crate’ fifty thousand birds at a time for market. The entire operation, not automated, was run by my Dad, my Mom as she had time, and a hired hand, one Glenn Baker. In his ‘spare time’ Dad also maintained several hives of bees, raised prize-winning show rabbits, and always lots of flowers.
I vividly recall ‘helping’ grade eggs for packing, feeding the chickens by hand, and my favorite, gathering eggs. It was just too cool to reach under a setting hen and harvest that big warm egg for my little basket. I got 5 cents when it was full!
Church fellowships, Staub reunions, gatherings of my Mom’s five siblings and their broods from New York, and periodic get-togethers of the neighboring families were regular occurrences at Red Rock. We had picnic tables, croquet and softball tourneys, and lighted horseshoe pits. Dad asked our neighbor, Mike Crum (legendary hunter and stone mason) to build us a massive white granite fireplace/grill that would cook 40 halves of chicken at a time! Bob and Lois were all about hospitality and it almost always involved chicken.
A lot has changed in the 60+ years since I lived at Red Rock. As an old guy I don’t like to bemoan the loss of ‘the good old days’ with tube tires, party-line telephones, no TV, seamed hosiery, and polio. But I do confess a deep regret about the ill-fortunes of the great American chicken. And chickens are critters I know something about.
I also spent a couple of years as operations director for 24 Popeye’s chicken stores in the early ‘80’s, so I got a pretty good view of the commercial side of delivering poultry products. They served 8-piece cut, pretty good-sized birds, but they were far smaller and, in my view, inferior to the chickens I grew up around. A few years later Jeanie and I raised a couple dozen at a time, enjoying rich fresh eggs, and battling with possums, racoons, and foxes for the rights to their future. We finally gave up the battle and turned the henyard into a really fertile garden plot. But it was fun while it lasted!
During that time, we also encountered some genetically engineered birds. None of them tried to take over the farm or threaten to eat us; maybe that’s a few mutant generations down the line. These guys were just kinda pitiful; couldn’t walk right or even stand up if you let them live past four or five months. Serious kinks in the works of a perfectly good chicken. Real Frankenstein stuff. Sad.
What most folks don’t realize is how respected, prized, and even revered the chicken has been over the centuries. In 1500 BC Egyptians treasured them as ‘the bird that gives birth every day.’ They were valued in Mesopotamia as ‘Persian alarm clocks,’ the Hindu’s believed they channeled evil spirits, and the Greeks thought lions were sorely afraid of roosters.
The Romans had a poultry industry, and built their coops facing Southeast (not sure why) and adjacent to any kitchen, as they believed warmth and smoke were good for them. In their culture it was an especially good omen if a chicken approached you from the left.
In the 6th century Pope Gregory declared the rooster the emblem of Christianity, and in the 9th century Pope Nicholas ordered the figure of a rooster on every church steeple. You can occasionally see one yet today. Amen! Church Chickens!
I guess I’m simply using the American chicken to spotlight my feeling of loss over so many things that have changed, but not for the better. Now-a-days the poultry served in most outlets can’t even be described as ‘having actually lived’ as a chicken. Slaughtered at 6 weeks (50 billion a year, world-wide) . . . “Is this a pigeon?” . . . . . they’ve often been caged, drugged, overstimulated; experiencing nothing akin to a normal environment. Once processed for consumption, in some cases their tiny frames are sprayed, disinfected, and injected with a magic potion that makes them sparkle, somewhat like an actual chicken.
Now of course the chicken doesn’t realize all this dreadful stuff. They don’t have the internet to discover how free, and wild, and expressive other chickens might be living. In point of fact, the whole mythology and sentiment surrounding chickens (including this contribution) is because these feisty birds derive their ‘character’ from their human observers. Perhaps that’s why there are now large growers making an effort to treat their product more humanely. Thumbs up!
Nevertheless, it always bothers me to follow a big poultry truck. I always want to buy those birdies some more time! Our systemic society requires commercial growers; otherwise only a few country folks would ever eat chicken. I get that.
Still, I cling to my idyllic vision of poultry. There are just some things you shouldn’t mess up, and a good chicken is one of them. There’s only one time-honored way of producing the kind of chicken I grew up eating and enjoying. Give ‘em some space, and time, and good food . . . and respect, and you’ll get an interesting pet, a better drumstick, a healthier chicken soup, and likely be the better for it!
Perspective is important. Given a choice, no self-respecting chicken would toil for the benefit of insensitive humans, forced to exist in cramped, unnatural environs, enduring a rigorous schedule and scrutiny, body filled up with various additives, and eating unmentionable stuff passing for food. . .
. . . . Hmmm. Can you think of a higher species sometimes struggling with similar issues? Well, I probably shouldn’t dabble in any more socio/political stuff. I’m a big chicken!