Where Did Chickens Come From? The Domestication of the Chicken

Consider this:  You’re an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, you want to let everybody know about your war exploits and plunder, and social media hasn’t been invented yet—what should you do?  Well, if you’re Thutmose III, the Napoleon of ancient Egypt, you inscribe all of your immodest assertions right onto one of the walls of the great Karnak temple for all people to see.   Fortunately for Thutmose III, inscribing information into stone has given it a bit more permanency than a blog entry or a Facebook post might have.  People have been looking at those inscriptions for over 3000 years, and the “Annals of Thutmose III” are still there on the ancient walls of the ruined Karnak temple in Luxor, Egypt for all to read. 

Meet the Flock—November & December 2017

Here’s a shot of Carmen Maranda the big Cuckoo Marans hen having a meditative moment in the chicken run.

Here’s my photogenic little bantam frizzled Cochin roo, Paul!

Millions of Mistreated Chickens—The Truth About Meat Chickens

“You don’t have to be a vegan to wonder if it is right to put another entire species in perpetual pain in order to satisfy a craving for chicken salad and deviled eggs.” – Andrew Lawler, “Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?”

Broiler Chickens (Wikimedia Commons - Naim Alel -  Птичник.JPG)

There have been a few readers who have taken umbrage to my posts about the mistreatment of chickens.  And I get where they’re coming from.  It can be distressing to navigate to my blog looking for pictures of cute Hipster Hens happily pecking and playing in my coop, and instead get hit over the head with stories about millions of chickens being mistreated.

But here’s the deal—if you scroll down to the bottom of this page you’ll find Randy’s Chicken Blog's mission statement.  There you’ll find these declarative sentences: “My chickens are really cool.  All chickens are really cool. The majority of chickens being raised for meat or egg production, in spite of their inherent coolness, are treated cruelly. You can help make changes by your purchasing habits. Educate yourself! Read labels! Check company websites!”  I think it would be unethical to blog about chickens without also discussing the issues surrounding the treatment of commercial chickens. While it’s great that we love our backyard hens, we can’t lose sight of the fact that the majority of the chickens alive in the world right now have miserable lives.  It is important that we chicken appreciators stay informed about the situation because we do appreciate chickens and we recognize them to be intelligent, sentient creatures who have the capacity for joy, but also the capacity to suffer.