Our new home has a chicken coop. When people realize this, they tend to ask a series of questions:
- Is that a chicken coop?
- Does/did the house come with chickens?
- Are you going to get chickens?
We asked the sellers to rehome their existing flock of (admittedly beautiful and seemingly good-natured) chickens, because we didn’t want to have to learn chicken husbandry while packing, moving, and doing home improvements. But we are considering the possibility of getting our own flock, especially since our dog was absolutely enchanted by the sellers’ birds during tours and inspections.
As part of deciding whether I should become a Chicken Lady, I borrowed Under the Henfluence by Tove Danovich. I went on quite the emotional journey while reading, from “I’m definitely never getting chickens” to “Yeah actually I might kind of want chickens” to “I think I might become vegan because the poultry and egg industries are terrible.”
Under the Henfluence takes you through Danovich’s journey to becoming a chicken lady, from tiring of city life and buying a home with enough room for a flock in Portland, to getting her first chickens, to the highs and lows of having poultry, to attending chicken shows and virtual 4H meetings during the pandemic, and more. Along the way, you’ll learn a lot about chickens, including a lot of stuff you’d rather not know about industrial egg farming and where your own backyard flock came from.
I was expecting a cozy, light-hearted book, but this came with quite a few gut punches and made for difficult listening at times. I got attached Danovich’s chickens through her stories of them, only to hear of them dying due to animal attack or disease. I was already on the fence about getting chickens due to the fact that I know they don’t live very long and I’m not sure I want to set myself up for the pain of getting attached and then losing them after a few years; Danovich doesn’t shy away from this reality.
On the other hand, the chapter about how battery hens are kept left me feeling that if we’re not going to be vegans, we probably should have our own flock of hens to provide us with eggs in a more ethical way. Except that there’s so much culling at the hatcheries that provide you with chicks, and what if we end up with a rooster?
But then Danovich goes to a national chicken show and describes all the cool heritage breeds and I’m like “I want cute bantam chickens to be best friends with my corgi!”
Like I said, it was quite the emotional journey. I still don’t know if I’m going to have chickens, and if I do, will I order them from a hatchery, or adopt former battery hens, or something else? Luckily, I don’t have to decide until at least this Spring. I have a few months to unpack the baggage I collected on my journey.
Whether you’re already a chicken person, or are thinking about becoming one, or just want to know more about the critters that have become such an integral part of most omnivores’ diets, this book makes for some pretty interesting reading. Just be aware that it’s not as cute and cozy as the cover and description make it seem.
CWs and TWs: Animal death, animal cruelty, descriptions of animal injury and illness.
Source and Format: I read this as an audiobook from Sno-Isle Libraries.
Book Bingo Prompts
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): When You Need a Shock. It’s not that I’m shocked by the reality of chickens, it’s that I’m shocked by how much death was in this particular book. I really should have read the description better, but I really expected that Danovich would at least ease us into the more painful parts of being a chicken person. It felt like the first 3-4 chapters all had some sort of death in them and I was not emotionally prepared.
Book Bingo Progress
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 22 out of 25 prompts complete. 6 bingos.
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 19 out of 25 prompts complete. 4 bingos.