I get a lot of people linking to things on The Art of Doing Stuff Facebook page. Stuff they want me to see.
Most often it's either about potato chips, chickens, or pizza.
On rare occasions it's about something that doesn't have to do with food. I don't like those rare occasions. They make me itch.
Pizza can make you itch too but only if you eat it while sitting in a patch of poison ivy. Which would be worth it for even the worst piece of pizza.
So when Julie put up a chicken link on my Facebook page the other day I thought … Huh … a chicken link! Actually I said …. Huh! A chicken link! outloud and sprayed potato chips all over my computer.
What I opened up when I clicked on that link was a whole new world.
Allow me to introduce to you via Julie, via Geekologie ...
This photo is not Photoshopped. This is what the actual chicken looks like. Every single bit of it is black.
Everything.
This chicken's skin, bones and organs … are black.
You might think it's ugly. Horrifying even. A freak of nature. I love it.
The Ayam Cemani is a breed of chicken from Indonesia. And I want one.
Which is a shame because you can only buy them in pairs. And they're $5,000 per pair. Unless you do some REAL digging on the Internet in which case you can pick up a pair from Green Fire Farms for the low, low price of $1,999.
On the other hand a black Sharpie only costs a couple of bucks.
So. What do you think? The Ayam Cemani.
Breathtakingly Beautiful or Shockingly Scary?
OK, so this is not a chicken question. Or comment. (Although I do adore these black chooks) - I need help. Serious help. I am moving to a new house 2.5 hours drive away. I need to move my two chooks, two ducks, 3 cats, 1 dog and……and enormous, only semi tame giant goose. How do I move my goose? His name is Loretta (he’s trans-gander) and he will go berserk in the car. I can’t fly him there, as the tiny town I’m moving to has no airport. He can’t fly (apart from small flappy joyful jumping jacks on his tippy toes occasionally). He bites and shrieks and chases everyone and everything. The only thing that calms him is lying on his back in my hammock with me, and that has only ever happened twice in 8 years of goose guardianship. So, Karen, Help! (And ‘aww bless’ to the lady from wherever it was in the US that knows about the All Blacks rugby team, who commented on your black chooks. We are a tiny wee country and we just love it when people from big countries notice us. )
I have a pair that I hatched in my house they are beautiful. The hen is laying five days a week and the rooster is doing his thing. I have half dozen eggs in the incubator right now if I'm lucky in six days I will have some chicks .
My daughter raised an alternative all black (like the New Zealand rugby team) chicken that is more reasonably priced. They're called Svarthonas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svarth%C3%B6na). We live in the far north of Idaho so these chickens are more adapted to our climate. She named her hen Morticia and her rooster Gomez. She is a dark little soul, but we love her.