Product Description

Studio: Pbs Release Date: 05/06/2009 Run time: 60 minutes

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9385 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-11-18
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 60 minutes

From the Back Cover
Most of us best know the chicken from our dinner plates. Whether as thigh, wing or drumstick, we barely pause a moment to consider the bird's many virtues. This program expands the frontiers of popular awareness and delightfully reveals that this small, common and seemingly simple animal is as complex and grand as any of God's creatures. The stories are illustrated with narrative vignettes depicting these birds at their magical best, inspiring fascination and gentle humor. The film allows us to rethink our relationship with a creature we have previously take for granted, while at the same time providing a lens through which we look at ourselves. It is the "natural history" for an animal like no other.

Customer Reviews

Hysterically ironic, even poignant at times.
I caught this film at the USA Film Festival in Dallas last year, thinking it would be a fun way to spend an hour or so. (As you may be able to surmise by my online name, I have something of a thing for chickens.) Little did I know what was in store for me and my companions. The stories are charming, some even downright silly, and I learned way more about chickens than I ever thought I would.

I loved the story of the lady who gave her chicken mouth-to-beak resuscitation after it got lost in a blizzard, garnering national attention for them both. Then there's the story of Cotton, the pet rooster of a woman even more eccentric than I. This pampered chick has his own special seat in the car so that he may ride around with his owner, who dresses him in diapers (guess chickens can't be house-trained!) and washes and blow-dries him daily, after they swim laps in her pool. He also loves to watch TV with his human. (Apparently chickens have vision similar to ours, and also enjoy all kinds of music!) There's also a story about a rural neighborhood where a man who raised fighting cocks moved in, and all hell broke loose because of the noise the roosters made. I also learned from Mike ("Miracle Mike") that chickens can indeed live a very long time without a head! And a pastor tells his moving story about a tiny hen he owned who defended her chicks against a marauding raptor. This little film may also make you change the way you think about eating poultry (I was already a vegetarian), showing the horrors to which chickens are subjected before being slaughtered for consumption.

Director Mark Lewis' tongue is firmly planted in his cheek with some of these stories, treading a fine line between mocking/deriding his subjects, and gazing upon them with pure affection. This film is truly a celebration of chickens, and the people who love them.

Share the Love, Hug a Chicken
This is a great program for people who just don't know chickens.
The program comes across as a bit anthropomorphic, but it is a very sensitive, very enlightening, very engrossing, insightful look into the life of a fellow creature we too often take for granted. Chickens tend to be under-appreciated considering the numbers of them it takes to feed us. Eggs, McNuggets, buffalo wings, Teriyaki, chow mein, etc.

There are several people in this program who are clearly absorbed with the Nature of the Chicken. They dearly LOVE chickens--but they are people who probably love cats, dogs, kids, and other people, too.
Chickens seem much more special after watching this program.

The Natural History of the Chicken is very close to
....the Unnatural History of Man.

If the story about the frozen chicken brought back to life with CPR doesn't get you, or the one about the headless chicken or the one in which an entire country community responds to the torrent of Bantam rooster crowing, maybe the one in which the lady shows how she puts the Depends on her pet chick or the story of how the mamma chicken saves her brood from the hawk ('I would be proud to be called chicken.') will. These are tales told with a deadpan and a tongue in cheek ala PBS's Rare Visions show. Something here will have you chuckling...or clucking....and putting a big smile on your face. If, however, you feel the need to sit on a few eggs, I suggest you seek a therapist.