Here is a picture of one of my favorite chickens. Shhh--don't tell her sisters!
My family is notorious for playing favorites. My paternal grandmother had four grandkids and she told every single one of us that we were her favorite.
On my mom’s side of the family, they played hardball when it came to playing favorites. Once you aligned yourselves with your favorite relatives, you shunned your other kin completely. This led to some very interesting situations where family living under the same roof had to eat dinner in shifts and other such nonsense in order to avoid speaking to each other or even being in the same room together.
Because of this, I’ve always tried really hard to not play favorites with anybody. Despite my best efforts, it occasionally does happen. Recently, I have developed a strong favoritism for one of my laying hens.
Over the past decade or so, I have always had a flock of at least thirty laying hens, and have sometimes had as many as 150 or so of them, give or take. And I try to love them all equally! I have never really had a favorite chicken.
So, I don’t know how this happened, but one of my chickens managed to capture my heart. She came to our farm as a chick this past fall along with 29 of her newly-hatched siblings. She didn’t do anything special, but somehow, I really took a shine to her.
Now, I give her special treats almost every day. I have been trying hard to figure out what breed of chicken she is so I can find her relatives and make a scrapbook and family tree for her. (Ha, just kidding!). Anyhow, as much as I like her, I try hard not to make her siblings jealous. Maybe I’ll take a play from my grandmother’s book and pull each one of them aside to let them know that they are my “favorite”.
