BamBam: The area of the Ozarks we live in is a big producer of chickens for market. Many humans in the hills raise their own, too. We grew up with chickens, and always had them around, until we moved to the city. Not just white chickens that are raised for meat, but little flocks of mixed colors, feather patterns, and sizes. I got along with them quite well, especially a red hen named Penny. The last few years we had mostly banties. Little guys.
Mewsette: Yes, a chicken house full of little banties is what I remember best. I spent a lot of my time in that chicken house! There were no mice in there, I guarantee! Banties come in many of the same breeds as the big chickens, such as Cochins, Brahmas, Wyandots and Polish. Cochins are very fluffy and round, with feathered feet, and they weigh 9 or 10 pounds. But the Cochin banties only weigh about 2 pounds. They're little and cute, and eat much less! They lay nice little eggs, too. We had red ones, blue, white, black, golden, speckley brown, all colors! They are not excitable, and they were nefur afraid of me. They were used to me being there.
When I was young, we still had Hans, the little brown rooster who was way older than I was! Remember? He followed Mom around like a puppy dog.
BamBam: Don't say dog. Yes, I remember him. He was a chick when I was a kitten.
Mewsette: No, I won't. We lost a lot of those chickens in my early years because of loose d*gs. But little Hans died of old age in a tree one night in Texas.
We took the chickens we had left with us when we all moved to the Ozarks when I was 8. We had a caravan of 3 cars and trucks pulling stuff, 5 cats, 16 chickens, and my pet goldfish, Herbie. That's when we really entered chicken-producing country.
BamBam: That's right. All up through Arkansas you see farm after farm with rows of very long white metal chicken houses. They raise chickens for Tyson.
The big hatcheries deliver up to 50,000 Cornish cross chicks to a farm, several times a year, and the humans raise them for 8 to 12 weeks. The Cornish grow very fast! Then giant Tyson trucks go to pick them up at the farms when they are market weight.
Mewsette: Yes, those trucks are all over the roads, stacked high with chickens and white feathers flying. If you get behind one, you might think it's snowing, but it's just chicken feathers. We lived a few miles from a town with a big chicken processing plant. Mom said sometimes, when she came home from work through there, the whole town smelled like chicken soup. Mmmm. I love chicken soup, don't you?
BamBam: No. Had my fill of it.
Mewsette: Oh, it's good. Anyway, then the chicken farmers hose out, clean and disinfect all those long metal houses, cause in a few days the hatcheries deliver more chicks and they start over again!
BamBam Just think of all the millions of chickens it takes to feed all our humans, not to mention the cats who like chicken. Lots of them come from the Arkansas Ozarks. I do want to stress to all cats that chickens are not prey, not even little ones. All cats in my house, because I taught them right, knew that chickens were our friends. They weren't meat unless they came in a package from the grocery store!
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