Customer Reviews

The Chicken Book

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From egg to poult to hen to rooster to featherbed and deepfreeze, from the ancient Egyptians to neo-feudal Southeast Asia to the iconographic Petaluma chicken ranch to the modern industialized chicken culture, this book covers everything you could ever need, want or just happen upon with respect to the chicken---except for one thing: it totally ignores the Chicken MacNugget!! Nonetheless (or perhaps because of this), it is not just a manual for the chicken fancier, the cockfight afficionado or the backyard farmer. It is truly an examplary product of a "LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION", and deserving of much wider appreciation than it has received to date. Page Smith, a well-known popular historian, co-taught an interdisciplinary seminar with a biologist named Charles Daniel entitiled "The Chicken" for undergraduates at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in the early 1970's. No doubt some initially perceived the course title as a joke, but they were wrong. Somewhere along the line, someone injected some intellectual rigor and real insight into the course syllabus. With the aid of their teachers, the students performed a tour de force of research, covering every facet of the chicken from cultural, historical, religious, biological, agricultural and even epistemological points of view. The professors took the student work and fashioned it into a book that is a classic in every sense of the word. "THE CHICKEN BOOK" is a beautifully written minor masterpiece of historic arcana, zoological detail, small-scale poultry management, veterinary medicine, cultural anthropology, blood-sport historiography and culinary arts. Long out of print and hard to find, the book well deserves this new edition. Whether or not you have a specific interest in chickens, this is well worth reading. As an example of what an active intelligence can do with a relatively commonplace and mundane topic, this book was way ahead of its time!!

This is a great book, detailed concise. It is wonderful from a Historical standpoint and for someone wanting simply to know the where and why of chickens. It is not light reading but it is the best fact filled book out there, most chicken books are too "ditzy". This is not the case here.Fact filled and entertaining, could use a few pictures but excellent just the same.

The Chicken Book
By Page Smith and Charles Daniel
The University of Georgia Press, 2000
Softcover, 380 pages.
ISBN: 0-8203-2213-X

Reviewed by Karen Davis[...]

When I started United Poultry Concerns in 1990, one of our first members, Ruth Dahl of Minneapolis, Minnesota, sent me her well-thumbed copy of The Chicken Book, first published in 1975. Like me, Ruth engaged in an impassioned dialogue with the book, underlining passages and writing in the margins. The Chicken Book invites a passionate response. Anyone who is interested in chickens and in the human relationship with the chicken, worldwide and historically, should buy and read this book.

The Chicken Book is not a happy book, but it is a fascinating one. It presents a jumble of messages including chicken and egg recipes. The two chapters devoted to cockfighting tell you a great deal about this activity, but if you expect Smith and Daniel, who oppose chicken factory farming, to oppose cockfighting, be warned. They show the cruelty of cockfighting, but their main criticism is directed at the "prigs" and "prudes" who historically have opposed cockfighting and sought to outlaw it. Of the British Parliament's decision to ban cockfighting in 1834, they claim, "No one was harmed by cockfighting except the reckless in their pocketbooks."

They write: "Cockfighting was, to be sure, a brutal sport, but this is a rather brutal world and it perhaps is not too much to suggest that the passion to reform it might have been directed at worthier targets" (p. 96).

The authors state, and they show, that "There is an abundance of evidence that Western man's rages and lusts, however sublimated their forms, are fully as cruel as those to be found in other cultures" (p. 124). For some people, including the authors, humanity's cruel rages are defensible if they take a classical populist ceremonial form. But when the human rage for cruelty takes a modern industrial form their hackles rise. Smith and Daniel deserve credit for being among the first informative critics of chicken factory farming. They focus particularly on the battery-cage system of egg production. Compared to old- fashioned chicken-keeping, which was being converted to industrial production in the 1950s, they write: "The rows upon rows of neat, clean birds, with their mutilated beaks, in the small cages, were like a glimpse into an Inferno as terrible in its own way as any of the circles of Dante's hell" (p. 287). Here Ruth Dahl cried out with her ballpoint pen, "And No One Cares and Helps Them!"

The Chicken Book describes the poultry genetics mania that began in the 1930s when the biologist John Kimber started Kimber Farms in Fremont, California. "It was his inspiration to apply the most modern discoveries in the rapidly expanding field of genetics to the breeding of chickens for specific purposes--meat or eggs" (pp. 270-271). Noting that the term "Farms" was a concession to popular sentiment, the book observes that the "efficient, white-gowned workers in the antiseptic laboratories of Kimber Farms had little time for sentiment. To them the baby chickens (half of whom were killed at birth and incinerated or fed to the hogs) hatched by the millions in their enormous incubators had to be seen primarily as items on an assembly line. The fact that they were alive was, it seems fair to suggest, incidental" (p. 272).

The Chicken Book has interesting chapters on the chicken in folklore and in "medicine"; the ancients used the testicles of cocks (the authors tell us the term "rooster" was coined by the prudish Victorians) to "treat" impotence and epilepsy, and "Pliny wrote that when a man suffered from chronic headaches a cock should be shut up and forced to abstain from food and water for several days, then its feathers should be plucked from its neck and bound around the patient's head along with the cock's comb" (p. 127).

The Chicken Book contains some of the best writing about chickens anywhere, including passages from Plutarch and the Italian Renaissance writer Ulisse Aldrovandi. Here, for example, is the authors' description of the birth of a chicken:

"As each chick emerges from its shell in the dark cave of feathers underneath its mother, it lies for a time like any newborn creature, exhausted, naked, and extremely vulnerable. And as the mother may be taken as the epitome of motherhood, so the newborn chick may be taken as an archetypal representative of babies of all species, human and animal alike, just brought into the world" (p. 317).

The Chicken Book is an important part of the chicken's history. Though for some reason the photos of "a modern incubator" and "a modern chicken factory" are missing in the reprint, society's industrial curse on chickens is etched in words:

"Chickens confined, and especially chickens confined in large numbers, like people confined in large numbers, are at their least appealing. In such circumstances, chickens, like people, give off offensive odors; disposing of their cumulative wastes becomes a major problem; they behave badly to each other, bedeviling and pecking each other in boredom and frustration; they become neurotic and susceptible to various diseases of the body and the spirit. This is what happened to chickens." (p. 272)
[...]

this book is a must for either the chicken fanatic, fancier, admirer, or those who think they are just neat. it is a wonderful compilation of mystery, fact, fiction, myth, and folklore. whether you have just a few chickens for pleasure or raise them for food, eggs, fighting or what have you this book is a real gem to add to your chicken library.

This book is a must read for those who enjoy myth and folklore. Ancient legends of the cock's fertility, association with the sun as "day sounder," and courage in battle are all dealt with in depth. In this book, the chicken is acknowledged for its contributions to human art, literatue, and culture. The bird that scratches around the barnyad is also the prolific founder of human civilization due to its ability to be "mass produced." From the mysterious ritual cock rings of ancient Asia to the opressive egg batteries of the modern factory farm, all aspects of the human relationship with "Gallus gallus" are covered.

This book promises a lot more than it delivers. The authors continually present their opinions and personal biases as fact.

Before spending your money on this book, you should be aware that the authors defend the cruel "sport" (gambling enterprise) of cockfighting. They criticize the "prigs" and "prudes" who historically have opposed cockfighting and sought to outlaw it. Of the British Parliament's decision to ban cockfighting in 1834, they claim, "No one was harmed by cockfighting except the reckless in their pocketbooks." Hmm.. how about the birds?

The authors write: "Cockfighting was, to be sure, a brutal sport, but this is a rather brutal world and it perhaps is not too much to suggest that the passion to reform it might have been directed at worthier targets" (p. 96). That just about says it all about this book. If you care about animals, are interested in understanding chickens and their historic relationship with humans, or hope to keep a backyard flock or pet hens, you are likely to hate this book. I'm wondering if the positive reviews on Amazon are primarily from those who participate in cockfighting?

Finally, the information on raising chickens seemed slapped together and the advice given was very questionable/not in agreement with any modern book about raising chickens. Those new to raising chicks and keeping adult chickens should be sure to read one of the many reputable books on the subject (Storey Guide to Raising Chickens, Keep Chickens!, etc.).

I live in a small, um, somewhat rustic village not far from Sacramento, California. In the sixties, there came to the town, so the local lore goes, artisans, who tended to live somewhat communally. They ultimately brought chickens to live with them, also communally. When the sixties were over, and the artisans moved on to state jobs and law school, the chickens remained. And were fruitful. And multiplied. And multiply still, as well as serving as mobile speed bumps, tourist attractions, points of political controversy (Chased and attacked chickens, particularly adults, especially roosters, have been known to retaliate in kind, to people who treat them fowlly: actions are afoot to collect ((nap?)) the current chickens and replace them with non-aggressive breeds ((Hey, it's California, after all))),and t-shirt and advertising icons. All in all, it's an idyllic little place that resembles nothing so much as say, the set for Murder She Wrote, if you happened to toss in some palm trees and some chickens along with the pines in the town square. Think Norman Rockwell. Think Norman Rockwell on nitrous oxide. It's a place where nobody sleeps very late, where nobody really has to go hungry, and where approximately every other resident is a chicken.

But I've lived there for a while, so I know these things. Paige Smith's book was out of print for a long while (But now thanks to U of Georgia P, the folks who brought back William Hedgepeth's The Hog Book--there's a pattern here), but now you can read and know these things as well.

The chickens will be grateful.

I live in a small, um, somewhat rustic village not far from Sacramento, California. In the sixties, there came to the town, so the local lore goes, artisans, who tended to live somewhat communally. They ultimately brought chickens to live with them, also communally. When the sixties were over, and the artisans moved on to state jobs and law school, the chickens remained. And were fruitful. And multiplied. And multiply still, as well as serving as mobile speed bumps, tourist attractions, points of political controversy (Chased and attacked chickens, particularly adults, especially roosters, have been known to retaliate in kind, to people who treat them fowlly: actions are afoot to collect ((nap?)) the current chickens and replace them with non-aggressive breeds ((Hey, it's California, after all))),and t-shirt and advertising icons. All in all, it's an idyllic little place that resembles nothing so much as say, the set for Murder She Wrote, if you happened to toss in some palm trees and some chickens along with the pines in the town square. Think Norman Rockwell. Think Norman Rockwell on nitrous oxide. It's a place where nobody sleeps very late, where nobody really has to go hungry, and where approximately every other resident is a chicken.

But I've lived there for a while, so I know these things. Paige Smith's book was out of print for a long while (But now thanks to U of Georgia P, the folks who brought back William Hedgepeth's The Hog Book--there's a pattern here), but now you can read and know these things as well.

The chickens will be grateful.

Page Smith obviously has an affinity for fowl; not only does he write about them admirably in "The Chicken Book," but he draws them as well, in, of all things, a terrific little tome called "Florence the Goose: A True Story for Children of All Ages"!

Would that he had honored the chicken with his artistic impressions! The Japanese-inspired block-prints of "Florence" are wistful, delicate and emotional. I think this would have been a 5 starrer if Smith had rendered at least ONE chicken in this practically pictureless book!