Let me get this out of the way right now. I think chickens are stupid.
Now….before some of you get your feathers fluffled, let me give you my chicken credentials, so that you know…that I know these fowl dummies.
I grew up in the era of getting little purple, pink, and pastel-dyed chicks for Easter. No…
not the marshmallow kind..
The live kind.
Oh…stop gasping!!! Remember, this was the era of no seatbelts, leaving kids in the car while you went into the grocery store….and people smoked in every closed building.
Live chicks were no big deal. After they grew their coming of age-pullet-feathers, we put them with the other chickens. The weather-hardened ones. The ones who stood around, gawping as a chicken hawk soared down and took them for a little road trip. The ones I put in a box and they’d go to sleep because they thought it was night. The ones who couldn’t figure out how to get back on the other side of the fence to their chicken buddies—even though they were standing in front of the open gate….You know…the stupid ones.
Maybe if I wouldn’t have put the purple or pink chicks with the dumb ones, they would’ve grown up to be geniuses. By the time I was old enough to stop receiving baby chicks for Easter and start asking for a chocolate stash, I was convinced that chickens didn’t have the good sense God gave a whisk broom.
That’s why this trend of urban chicken farming, amuses me. I have a friend who waxes on for fifteen minutes about the pleasurable sounds of chatty chickens. For her, it’s a whole brilliant, new world of discovery as she talks about when they roost and how to get an egg that doesn’t break in her hand.
I keep my mouth shut. Why?
“Stardust Melody” 1927
One of the most recorded songs of the 20th Century
Because years after I became too cool to raise color-tinted chickens, I discovered “good” music. I once went on and on about this great new song. I even sang a couple of verses for my Dad. He let me have my moment of discovery. It was a while before he told be that “Stardust Melody” was a hit when he was young. It was just making the rounds again.
Oh.
Things change. Things stay the same…kinda the same…
I still think chickens are stupid.
Lutheran Ladies Circle 
I don’t know about chickens being dumb. I once spent most of an afternoon trying to teach a chicken to talk. “Chick-en. Chick-en. You are a chick-en.” I was about five, I think. My father finally told me that “cluck-cluck” was a close as we were going to get. “Chickens don’t have lips, sweetheart.”
LOL I thought they were cannibals when I was a kid. We went back to Missouri every summer to visit the relatives who lived on farms (and in the “olden days” without plumbing!). As “city kids” we were eager to try every thing the did on the farm. We soon discovered that chickens do not want to give up their eggs and will bite you to keep you away. Some would even chase us on ground and in air trying to get us to evacuate their home. I was so frightened of them (and the hogs) that I would give up. My brothers not so fast to wave the white flag. I remember grandpa grabbing a chicken by the neck and flinging her across the coop stating, “This is how to get the eggs from ’em.” I preferred to watch my brothers and cheer the chickens on.
Also, chickens who lost their heads were so stupid to not realize they were dead that they would run around for a while! And a headless running chicken squirting blood is not a fun sight!
My partner’s sister who used to watch television in the evening with a rooster on her lap would argue with you about the intelligence of chooks.
I probably wouldn’t – but even the undyed variety have rather more charm than a lot of people I am forced to know.