Chickens, commitment, and consumption

by Kim, October 14, 2009 at 6:00am

Writer Susan Orlean had a piece in The New Yorker recently about her sudden and deep-seated desire to raise chickens. It's an interesting read from a practical point of view because it talks about sick chickens, hens eaten by predators, and the difficulty in finding an appropriate coop. The article is also interesting because of what it tells us about consumption: the author found herself wanting to possess some of these domestic birds with what could almost be described as lust. She's not the first to be fascinated by the humble chicken: in the mid-19th century new breeds of hens were so coveted that they sold for many times their actual worth. This sounds like a fad, and it was; birds acquired in the frenzy of the "hen-bubble" often didn't survive once the novelty wore off.

Conscious consumers are accustomed to examining purchases critically: why do I feel such an overwhelming need to buy a certain thing? Is it a true need or an invented need? With respect to the writer's chickens, we can probably call it a bit of both: craving to have some connection with her food mixed in with all the other perks that come from taking up a new hobby. One could just as easily see the new-found camaraderie with other chicken aficionados replaced by scuba enthusiasts or a book club. The problem isn't the human desire for the new: that is an eternal and holy instinct that keeps us discovering and learning. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but the roadside of life is equally littered with failed projects, discarded, never-worn clothes, and outgrown interests. It's okay to grow and change, but not as okay to make the rest of the planet pay the price for our constantly-morphing selves.

That's why I love the image of Susan Orlean carting a sick chicken back and forth to the vet until she realizes its absolutely impossible to save it. Her hen-raising project is not just a whim, but a commitment to a living creature, and to a way of life. How different would our consumption habits be if we thought of all our acquisitions as sentient, named as additions to the family?

I used to work on a small egg-raising farm and confess that I also enjoyed acquiring the skill it took to snatch a warm egg without getting pecked. Having another species of life around unconcernedly carrying on with its chicken's affairs. Watching them peck avidly in the dirt. Sharing space with chickens and other farmyard animals was like closing a circle: the circle of food production that had always been pretty obscure before. Thinking about chickens this morning, I was greeted by the sound of a rooster, something that I'd never heard in my neighborhood before. It was an ancient sound, an equalizing sound, that of another species beginning its day.