The First Chicken

I recently read a fascinating article in Newsweek about how medieval Christians encouraged chicken evolution and most likely responsible for the creation of the domestic chicken. It doesn’t answer the question of which came first, but it does talk about the benefit of breaking the habit of being a seasonal breeder. (Tough habit to break! I hear. I wouldn’t know.) Imagine the joy of your annual omelet though!

It also discusses breeding chickens to like people. I know! It’s hard for me to conceptualize the little terrors that existed before this happened. Chickens are mean. They are one of the closet relatives to the T-Rex. I am firmly under the belief that if a chicken was large enough it would eat you without a question.  So, these medieval monks decided to raise these mildly evil birds and then concluded they needed more, faster.  Why? cause you can’t eat steak on Friday’s during Lent. Thus, the first domestic chicken.

A couple of years ago, I felt I needed to evolve past cows and cattle related paintings and spread my wings a little. So, I painted this chicken. It’s a small acrylic painting on canvas- 12 x 12 My mom came to visit a few days later and asked to take it to Dinosaur Land. It felt fitting. While I was at her house, I shot a couple of pictures. So, this is my first chicken-