Today’s Saturday Short is “Let’s Visit a Poultry Farm,” part of the “Let’s not and say we did” series. It’s about dinosaurs and how far they’ve fallen since the Chicxulub Impact.
Betty is playing with some chicks in a box outside The Store. She wants to take one home for a pet, but Father says no. They live in an apartment and chickens need lots of outside to be happy, he tells her. They’re also dirty birds, he doesn’t say. Instead, he takes her on a trip to his friend Mr. Miller’s farm to see just how what they’re like in person.
Betty, with nary a seatbelt on her, bounces with excitement when she sees the farm. She’s so excited, she teleports out of the car with Father to greet Mr. Miller and pet his cocker spaniel. Looks like there might be some puppies in the future. Maybe Betty can have one of those instead? Was Father trying a little distraction on Betty and her desire for a pet chicken?
Mr. Miller’s son Dick shows Betty around the farm. They start in the henhouse where they keep the white leghorns. Hey, these chickens aren’t outside. Father lied! Wait, leghorns? I say, I say, I say, is Betty about to meet Foghorn Leghorn, the greatest chicken of them all? No? These are all hens? Well, now I’m disappointed.
Dick shows Betty how good the chickens have it in the henhouse. They have straw to peck around in, water to drink roosts to perch on. He shows her the chicken feed because it’s just that exciting, and then lets her help him scatter grain for the chickens to eat. While the hens are distracted, Dick and Betty collect the eggs from the nesting cages.
They put the eggs in a wire basket and bring them to the egg-cleaning room. There Dick shows Betty how he scrubs the dirt (poop) off the eggs. If they’re really dirty, he scrubs them on a special rotating brush that looks like it could take your fingers right off if you’re not careful. Once the eggs are clean, he packs them in a box for the Eggman to take to the grocery stores.
And that, my dear Europeans, is why Americans refrigerate their eggs.
Just in time, the Eggman arrives. He trades Mr. Miller a sack of grain for three crates of eggs. I don’t know enough to tell you if that’s a good rate or not, but Mr. Miller seems satisfied so I guess it’s okay.
Now Dick shows Betty where they keep the pullets. Those are young hens who aren’t old enough to lay eggs yet. These chickens get to live outside where they can have all the grass and bugs they can peck. Dick tells Betty that Mr. Miller gets his pullets from a hatchery since he sells all his eggs. We get a quick glance inside a hatchery, complete with giant 1940s incubator that turns the eggs for you.
Then we’re treated to the requisite chicken short video of a chick hatching. It looks like hard work. That little chick is all wet and exhausted. Now it’s fluffy with lots of friends cheeping in the remains of their shells. Cute!
Dick has some chickens of his own that he’s raising for 4-H. These are Rhode Island Reds, which are good for laying and frying. Looks like Dick’s in charge of the Annual 4-H Fried Chicken Dinner.
Mr. Miller doesn’t just have chickens on his farm, though. He also has ducks. Or one mama duck with several fluffy baby ducks paddling around in the pond. But he has some turkeys as well! The narrator thinks that tom turkeys are called “gobblers” because he obviously comes from a place where turkeys don’t wander through your yard during mating season. I, however, have encountered turkeys in the yard so I know what they’re called.
And so Betty’s day on the farm comes to a close. She runs up to Father and spends the entire ride home telling him all about chickens and ducks and turkeys.
The next day Betty has eggs for breakfast and fried chicken for dinner. She is not horrified because she has learned that chickens are dirty birds and also good eatin’. Mmmmmm, fried dinosaur.
The Eclectic Reviewer 