“A Chicken in Every Pot”

The phrase, attributed to Herbert Hoover’s campaign for the Presidency in 1928, dates back to King Henry IV of France, who reigned in the late 16th century. We don’t need kings and presidents to remind us of the obvious fact that chickens sustain us. We joke about which came first, the chicken or the egg.  My money is on chickens – which definitely came before humans.

Our language is replete with references to chickens, and the way they live – probably because we can relate to them. We talk about a pecking order; being cooped up; building a nest egg; feeling hen pecked; mother hens; flying the coop, etc.  I could go on…but then I wouldn’t have time to care for our chickens.

Sadly, it is no longer obvious to many people where our food – and our chickens – come from.  We take it for granted that we can eat chicken without realizing that by doing so we are killing chickens.  That’s surprising considering that, unlike other species, the language we use provides little distance between the animal and the dish. As compared to steak or beef vs. cow, and ham or bacon vs. pig.  “Poultry” doesn’t fly.  With chickens, what you see is what you eat.  Interestingly, traditional cultures are much less hung up than we are about killing animals for food.

At Crows’ Feat Farm we raise chicks, and treat them with tender care, knowing how dependent we are upon them. We gather their eggs and share them with our community. We hatch new chickens. We let them enjoy the pastures, and wander into the compost pile or woods – where some are taken by hawks.  When females go into henopause, we let them brood over others’ eggs, or re-home them.  And we butcher roosters.  This is how we care for our flock.  It’s not just about treating animals well – that is a minimum moral standard to avoid the grotesque practices of “factory farming” that treat both animals and humans poorly.  Nor is it a simple business decision to lower the cost of a chicken by bringing the processing in house.  All of that is true, but not complete.  We recognize that chickens, like us, are born with a divine spirit, and deserve to be treated as such.