Chicken Fashion

Just when you think you’ve heard it all along comes something else. I read two online companies: Pampered Poultry and Hen Holster make washable cloth diapers for chickens. The idea was hatched (not my word) to help pet owners keep or care for their pets indoors or while transporting them to poultry shows. That’s all well and good, but how does one go about diapering a chicken?

Chickens are hard to catch; anybody who’s seen the movie Rocky can attest to that. It was a workout for him to catch the chicken his trainer Mickey used as a device to get him to be quick as lightning. He had to be quick and light on his feet. When he caught the chicken finally it was a victorious moment and then and only then was he ready to step into the ring and beat his opponent. I don’t want anybody to read this and think I’m equating Rocky’s opponent, Apollo Creed, to a chicken, I’m not. Apollo Creed threw a much harder punch. I’m merely painting a picture of how hard it is to catch a chicken.

The time it’ll take you to catch and diaper one is probably the time you would have spent cleaning up after one. Once you catch your chicken, you place it on the changing table the way you would a baby, you powder it the way you would a baby and then secure the diaper in place the way you would for a baby.

I wonder if chickens are comfortable in diapers or regard them the way women do Spanx; an unpleasant necessity. Do diapers come in sizes like human diapers? I wonder if the chicken’s parent’s fight over who has to change the diaper the way human parents do. What if the chicken lays an egg while wearing an already full diaper? Would you want to be the one to fish it out?

Last, since horses are always being transported (I always see them in those little trucks) why aren’t there horse diapers? I’m sure it must get messy, not to mention smelly in those trucks. But, that’s definitely one diaper I’d never change.