Hen Chronicles: To smooch or not to smooch

The Boston Globe ran a page-one story yesterday under this headline: “Coziness with chickens ruffles many feathers.” The gist of it was that the Centers for Disease Control is warning chicken owners not to “snuggle or kiss” their chickens, or let them into their homes. The accompanying photo showed a Massachusetts woman giving one of her 38 chickens — a Barred Rock, from the looks of it — a smooch on the neck.

The CDC issued its warning “in the wake of salmonella outbreaks linked to live poultry,” The Globe reported. “Most people don’t need to be told to keep their lips off a bird. Or informed that chickens make terrible roommates. But with the country in an urban-farming swoon . . . public displays of human-bird affection are not as uncommon as one might imagine.”

As much as I love our three hens, I would never allow Snow, Nellie or Hope into the house, even if the “guest” were decked out in a chicken diaper. (Yes, such things do exist.) When Snow had to be isolated for close to two weeks last year after she somehow managed to cut part of her comb from her head, she spent her recuperation in our small backup pen. We did move the pen into the garage every night for her security, but that’s as close as she got to the house.

Nor, for that matter, have I ever kissed a hen during our three-plus years of keeping chickens, for no other reason than that it wouldn't occur to me to do so. Still, chickens are affectionate creatures, as one person quoted in the newspaper story pointed out. Our hens are very attentive when I talk to them, and they generally like being held, although it may take them a few seconds to calm down when picked up.

As a rule, we don’t handle our birds all that much. But I always run my hand along each hen’s wings and back as the three of them emerge from the coop into the pen at dawn. It’s my way of wishing them a good morning. Thanks to all of those feathers, chickens are quite soft to the touch. Our girls certainly are accustomed to being stroked as they head down the ramp, and I have the distinct impression that they actually enjoy it.

But kissing chickens is not in the cards, at least not for us. Even Liz, who is especially attentive to the hens while feeding them snacks, does not go in for poultry pecks. “Quinnie is softer than any chicken,” she said of our chocolate lab Aquinnah. Unlike the chickens, our "big brown bear" lives in the house, where he gets snuggles and kisses galore.