Thanks for the avatar comments. My wife is a city girl, California born and raised. I was moved from Rochester, Massachusetts when I was a kid--parents moved to Silicon Valley area in 1959, but my Aunt Mildred and Uncle Lefty back in Rochester always had chickens, so I got to get the urge to keep a family tradition going. She had Plymouth Rocks, of course (Plymouth being the county they lived in), and when I would visit in the summer, I got to feed them and gather eggs. She had one really nasty rooster, though, that attacked me when I was about 13, and visiting back there. Funny thing was, he wasn't there the next day...wonder where that fried chicken the night before came from...wait a minute...I think I figured it out. They had pigs, turkeys, ducks. Got to help with the butchering of the turkeys....but I wouldn't want to take that on as a career. The only saving grace was they were too stupid to figure out what was going on...they were the dumbest things on the planet. Had absolutely no personality whatsoever....like many of my in-laws (but not on the wife's side). So my hens will probably be collecting social security long before they join the Choir Invisible...(Monty Python reference....this parrot is bleedin' demised...no, he's pining for the fiords...).
