The Chicken Chronicles

By Becky Cook

Have you ever wondered what your chickens were thinking as they wandered around your yard?
Are they plotting word domination, or just figuring out how to break into the house? Maybe both!

The Chicken Chronicles are light-hearted true stories about everyone’s favorite barnyard pet. Read about Dundee – the lone white chicken that enjoys going on walkabout, Fluffy Butt – a little red hen who lives indoors as well as out, and Jackson – the chicken who thinks she is human.
Set in the backyard, meet a family who keeps chickens, and the chickens who keep them on their toes. The Chronicles will keep you entertained from page one.

“The Chicken Chronicles is like reading James Herriot’s books - only specifically about chickens!” - River Ames, author

• Language: English
• Publisher: Becky Cook
• Release date: Dec 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9780463067338

Becky Cook

Becky Cook was born and raised on a dairy farm in Idaho where she learned to appreciate hard work, dedication, respect, honesty, and integrity. She has been a self employed business woman since she was 14, and a freelance writer and author for the last 15 years. She loves to interview people, especially older farmers.

Book preview

The Chicken Chronicles

By BECKY COOK

Illustrated by

MARY ANN CHERRY

Copyright © 2017 Becky Cook

All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-1981469314

ISBN-10: 1981469311

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

For my kids – Kaley, Kasia, Ethan, Shanae, Rainy, Sarah, Jorja, Connor

Thanks for encouraging me to write down all of my stories and tell them frequently.

With thanks to:

Kim Auten for amazing counsel and for keeping my head on straight. Gyda Stimpson for being a listening ear for all of my ideas. And especially to my daughter, Dr. Kasia Cook, for her talented expertise as an editor.

The Chicken Whisperer

T

he author and Dundee

My kids call me the chicken whisperer.

Apparently it is a well-earned title, although from my side, I can’t help it. My chickens talk to me all the time, I just listen. They are generally happy little birds who roam around and take care of my garden with me. Each of them has a unique personality, and I count them as friends.

My chickens keep me grounded. When I have a bad day I go outside and sit in the yard, and before too long they are all huddled near my feet, telling me all sorts of things.

Maybe other people are just jealous. Maybe that is it. They want to know what we are talking about. Well, I saved you some trouble and wrote a book about my chickens and some of the fun experiences we have had together. I included a few pictures but you’ll have to see the rest in your mind’s eye. It’s light hearted and fun, just like the birds are.

Enjoy!

Chicken – it’s NOT what’s for dinner!

Chicken on the bun versus chicken on the feet

Gone Walkabout

A year or more ago I was given four older chickens – Gladys is a Silver Wyandotte, and Edith and Jackie are Araucana.

I said there were four and there were. The fourth was a plain white chicken that was probably a Leghorn. Initially she had a regular name like the others but before too long she was renamed Dundee.

Dundee is an odd name, and it suited an odd bird. If she was human (and she thought she was) she likely would have been the one always getting into trouble. Not because she was naturally a troublemaker you understand, but rather because she possessed a natural curiosity about everything, had above average intelligence, and just flat out wouldn’t conform. This was a solid description of Dundee, who earned that name by regularly going on walkabout (like Mick Dundee of movie fame).

Even though I had a completely fenced yard, Dundee was always escaping. not a chicken run, mind you, but a six-foot tall privacy fence that allowed the birds unlimited free-range adventures within the confines of my quarter-acre backyard. The animal entrance to this wonderland backyard from the house presented itself as a small doggie door—perfectly sized for chickens too, which Dundee discovered after only an hour. I found her in the kitchen into which she had invited herself to see what the rest of the world lived like. From that point on, I was hard pressed to keep her out of the house until finally blocking off the doggie door completely. Still, she managed to invite herself in at every chance she got and since I live in a house with kids who leave the door open (and I do, too) she had ample opportunities to make her way inside. Most of the time though, she would just disappear and I couldn’t figure out how. But she had wings and I am sure she made use of them.

Dundee in the doggie door

While Dundee lived at our house, it wasn’t uncommon to open the front door to find her waiting patiently on the stoop. She would stand up, fluff up her feathers, and calmly march through the kitchen to the back door where she would rejoin the other chickens. I explained to her that the world outside the front door contains dogs and cars – large moving objects that might not stop for a lone chicken – but she was so incredibly curious that she could not be contained.

It happened that I had an online interview over Skype with a man who makes movies from Hollywood—he wanted to know what made me unique. I explained several interesting things about myself and then casually mentioned that I had a chicken who thought she was human. He asked me to elaborate, and I told him how Dundee would join us in the kitchen whenever she could, that she was incredibly curious, and was constantly underfoot if given even a partially open door.

He thought that was unique enough that he wanted to meet this Dundee character, and I told him that was a simple request as she had literally just walked past my feet in the kitchen.

Really.

I bent down and picked her up, and she was incredibly curious about my computer which I had never allowed