Chickens: Their Natural and Unnatural Histories

by Janet Lembke

Framed by the author’s personal experience with backyard hens, Their Natural and Unnatural Histories explores the history of the chicken from its descent from the dinosaurs to the space-age present. En route, Lembke surveys chickens in ancient Greece, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the nineteenth century, and modern times, including the role of chickens in Jewish and Muslim practices. She also investigates the birds’ contributions to science and their jaunty appearances in literature. Eggs receive a chapter of their own, as does chicken cuisine, comprising recipes from the Roman Empire to today’s favorites. Stories about chickens appear, too, often written by those who keep them, including the painter Grandma Moses, the man who holds Cleveland’s Farm Animal Permit No. 17, and Brenda, who had to give her young roosters a talking-to for behaving like sheep.   Chickens have only recently come to a sorry pass in the Western world, where broilers and laying hens are factory-farmed. Lembke investigates the fate of such birds and explores the sustainable, humane alternatives to raising birds for meat and eggs.   A celebration of the chicken in its every aspect, Chickens is sure to delight the chicken fancier, the backyard chicken keeper, and everyone concerned about where our food comes from and how we can treat animals more compassionately.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Nature, History

233 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2012

About the author

Janet Lembke (2 March 1933 - 3 September 2013), née Janet Nutt, was an American author, essayist, naturalist, translator and scholar. She was born in Cleveland, Ohio during the Great Depression, graduated in 1953 from Middlebury College, Vermont, with a degree in Classics, and her knowledge of the classical Greek and Latin worldview, from Homer to Virgil, informed her life and work. A Certified Virginia Master Gardener, she lived in Virginia and North Carolina, drawing inspiration from both locales. She was recognized for her creative view of natural cycles, agriculture and of animals, both domestic and wild, with whom we share the natural environment. Referred to as an "acclaimed Southern naturalist," she was equally (as The Chicago Tribune described her) a "classicist, a noted Oxford University Press translator of the works of Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus". She received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to translate Virgil's Georgics, having already translated Euripides’ Electra and Hecuba, and Aeschylus’s Persians and Suppliants.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Benjamin Stahl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another book for my collection of random, free-to-read titles on the Audible Plus catalogue. I'm no chicken expert or even an enthusiast, but as with most animals, I do find the feathery little things pleasant and cute, and in this case sometimes scary*.

My family growing up occasionally had chickens, but we never bothered to apply ourselves properly to the task, never quite respecting the responsibility involved, and so all our chickens sooner or later ended up being victim to the fox. One particularly regrettable time, I actually did grow very fond of a certain hen - a very pleasant-natured ISA Brown - whom we unoriginally named Ginger after the protagonist in Chicken Run. She was a beautiful bird, and she got so used to being petted by my brothers and me, that she would literally run up to us dog-like when we came home from school, clucking excitedly and laying her head over our shoulders when we scooped her up to cuddle. Sometimes I would pick her up and take her on a jolly little killing spree of moths which, at the time, liked to congregate on our dining room window. I would hold her up to the immobile moths, she would stare at them for a few moments, then in the space of a second, they would disappear down her throat.

Unfortunately, I came home one day to find our new puppy had torn her apart. I never could have thought I'd be devastated over losing a chicken until that day.

But that's enough about me, I think. It's just that I literally cannot think of much to say about the book itself. It's fine if you're obsessed with chickens, but for a casually interested reader like me, it was sometimes interesting, sometimes amusing, often charming, but too often a bit random and pointless - aka, too many recipes. I found the historical, cultural and biological aspects much more enjoyable.

* After all, not every chicken was my friend. I had a mate in school, who lived up the road on a large semi-rural property. There was this big shed up the back, with a chicken coop attached, and a particularly territorial rooster that would chase you down if ever you entered his domain. Typically, us boys enjoyed nothing more than the thrill of sneaking up to him as close as possible, then absolutely bolting for it when he spotted us and charged, our hearts pounding in our mouths. Once, tracking the rooster round the furthest side of the large shed - a quite hazardous liminal space - my escape was thwarted by a stack of corrugated iron sheeting. I tripped, fell into it, brought the whole lot down on top of me and sliced my wrist open. Finally, justice was served for that rooster who just wanted to be left alone.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to wait for this book for nearly a month after having requested from the library.  Was it worth the wait to read, even if I managed to devour this book as readily as I devoured some fried chicken while I was reading the book?  In a word, yes.  It is no surprise to anyone that I am immensely fond of chickens [1].  While I have never kept chickens myself, I have known some urban chicken farmers and long viewed chickens not only as a tasty food but also as a source for rich metaphorical and figurative language and understanding.  Perhaps most poignantly is the way that examining my view chickens has helped me see the sort of behavior that marks a predator, with an eye to looking at how chickens are developing in order to see how they would satisfy my own hunger without a sentimental tie for chickens [2] or any concern for their well-being on their own terms.  Admittedly, I find my predatory attitude towards poultry more than a little bit terrifying, even if it is also the source of a great deal of humor with others in my habit of giving names of food dishes to those chickens I have seen around me.

At a bit more than 200 pages, the author manages to cover a consider breadth as well as depth relating to chickens.  The author is rather clever in pointing to chickens both as a set of related species with a natural history (although this is full of evolutionary myths as ridiculous as those recounted by credulous ancients) as well as an unnatural history that has been shaped by mankind and its varied uses for chickens throughout history.  Beginning with a discussion of the author's desire to own chickens that was long delayed (1) and ending with a story of the author's eventual enjoyment as an urban chicken farmer (16) including an odd but entertaining blessing of the hen (appendix), the rest of this book is filled with a great deal of fascinating and entertaining and varied material.  Included is a discussion about the mythological natural history of the chicken and its domestication (2), the chicken through various ages like the classical world (3), the Middle Ages (4), the Renaissance (5), chickens as medicine (6), the early modern period (7), the modern period (8), and even flights of fancy like resurrected chicken (9) and the conquering chicken and its global travels (10).  The author then turns her attention to such important aspects as eggs (11), chickens as they are viewed by science (12), chickens in a wide variety of literature (13), as well as people who care for chickens (14) and some tasty recipes for chicken (15).  The book closes with some notes and a bibliography to encourage further reading for chicken-lovers.

It is obvious from looking at this book that the author has a deep love of chickens and a sense of the importance of humane treatment of the animals, showing herself deeply critical of industrial poultry raising techniques as well as the immense spread of cockfighting that can still be found in some parts of the world like East Asia, something I have witnessed myself in my own travels.  The author shows a great deal of happiness in sharing various myths and stories about chickens as well as the importance of early Egypt in establishing patterns of artificial incubation that would be copied by later chicken farmers.  The author also loves passing off the ridiculous myths of the ancient world about how to tenderize chickens through fear (not a good idea) or the thought that thunder made addled eggs, but doesn't realize that the ideas she parrots about the supposed evolution of chickens is just as ridiculous in a less artistic way as the stories she mocks the ancients for believing, but as long as the reader understands this the book can be read profitably for its mixture of sound insight, obvious sentimentality, and sublime ridiculousness.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2012...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2012...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...

[2] See, for example, the following quote from pages 204 and 205 of this book, taken from another book, The Chicken Book:  "Chickens are not pets; they are chickens; they are producers; they exist to lay eggs and to be eaten.  Never name a chicken.  To do this is merely cute--and silly--and an abuse of names.  This does not mean that you cannot enjoy, admire, and love chickens individually and collectively; it just means that you cannot sentimentalize and falsify your relationship to chickens."

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun read. It was not the most scholarly and often jumped from thought to thought like a rough draft, but I enjoyed it. I actually learned a lot too.

This is a bit outside the authors writing realm one can tell but she still did a great job.

[Benedict · Rating 3 out of 5]

Do you want a weirdly comprehensive account of everything vaguely chicken-related? Then this is your book.

From the evolutionary history of the chicken, to it's uses in historical times, to modernisation of the meat and egg industries, to hobbiest chicken-keepers, and recipes for bird and eggs alike. This book has it all.

Surprisingly engaging! The history is interesting, the tales whimsical.

The book loses a star for a blatent incorrect sentence. "Foghorn Leghorn, from Disney's Loony Toons". Nuh uh, miss me with that misinformation. Star lost for implied Disney monopoly on historic cartooning.

OTHERWISE I did really enjoy this. Bwark.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surprisingly fascinating

[GUSTAVO KOVALSKI · Rating 3 out of 5]

O livro mais completo que eu já vi sobre galinhas, mas não sobre como cria-las.