Uncommon Friends

It might seem surprising that a vegan would choose to read a book about keeping chickens - as we eat neither the birds themselves nor their eggs - however I was intrigued by Grazyna Witkowska's title choice, Uncommon Friends. As the book's synopsis suggests, Witkowska's priority is the welfare and happiness of her chickens and I was delighted to discover that Uncommon Friends is a book written by someone who recognises their chickens' individual personalities and preferences. The birds are effectively pets, on a par with a cat or a dog, with Witkowska having made a lifetime commitment to each one of her avian friends. She dismisses the sadly more common perception of chickens as mere egg-laying machines, to be worked to exhaustion and discarded once their productivity wanes.

Witkowska's prose style blends memoir with nonfiction research and most of her advice is informed by her own years of chicken-keeping experience. I appreciated her knowledgeable tone and also her willingness to include information about mistakes she made along the way. I loved getting to know each of her chickens as I read about their lives, and was encouraged to see how effective communication between birds and human helped both parties to understand each other. Uncommon Friends is a very readable book and I found it fascinating even though I have no particular interest in keeping any chickens myself. I would challenge anyone who has, or who is considering getting 'a few chickens for the eggs' to read Uncommon Friends. This book will turn that egg-machine perspective upside-down as it explains who those hardworking egg-layers really are.