The Photograph of a Dead Chicken

Two winters ago, I received an email from the New York chef, Tyler Kord, entitled, “I need to kill a chicken.” Tyler had been commissioned to write a cookbook on chicken and felt that in order to not be a phony, he should know what it’s like to kill one. And, in asking around about where he might be able to do this, he was pointed, quite quickly, to me.

A few months later, Tyler arrived at The Farm Cooking School and together we killed a few chickens, which we then plucked, and each cooked for dinner. In his cookbook, Dynamite Chicken, Tyler was kind enough to thank me in the acknowledgements. He wrote, “It seems creepy to say that I had a really wonderful time murdering chickens with [Ian], but I learned a lot and it made me think a ton about what it means to kill and consume animals, and it was a super-important and enriching experience.”

I killed my first chicken in the fall of 2011. It was after a long summer of tending a flock of 18 birds. I was moving off the farm and back to the city to work through the winter, and the chickens wouldn’t fit into the rented Brooklyn apartment. I invited some friends to the farm and together we killed the chickens, plucked them, butchered them, and froze the meat to cook all winter long. One of those friends was William Hereford. 

William is a photographer, a successful one. The next spring he gave me a signed photograph of a chicken, post-mortem, and pre-plucked. It was a stark picture. White, bloodied chicken on a dark wooden table with chef’s knife aside its body. Its white wings were relaxed and slightly open, angel-like, and its head was missing. It was beautiful and powerful and captured a sense of life in death. It was a great shot. I hung it, framed, at the cooking school as a thought piece. As to say without saying, “We know where our food comes from. We’re proud of that. We want to you to start thinking about that too.”

Throughout the winter of 2011/12, I ate a lot of chicken. I would thaw a pack of thighs for roasting, or drumsticks and necks and feet for soup and stew. The livers got sautéed and pureed into pates. The bones became stock, curing colds and chills. In the many many years since I have kept birds throughout the summer to kill in the fall to eat through the winter. At the moment I have 4 in an old shed that has been converted to a coop in back of our house. 

Every morning, I open the door to the coop and chickens race into their yard. They hunt and peck at the ground in search of bugs and kitchen scraps that I feed them along with their grain. They have personalities, to an extent, although nothing like a dog or even a cat. I don’t name them or get too attached, because I know their fate. But they have moments of cuteness. They squat and wait to be pet, which they seem to like. They run to the gate when I get home in the evening, hoping for a treat from the kitchen; some moldy bread or leftovers from a couple weeks ago. They chase each other and puff up their feathers with a dance-like shake. And the eggs are fantastic.

We have a complicated relationship with much of the chicken in this country. It is the most popular animal protein that we eat. And, we have devised a system of growing and slaughtering chickens that is incredibly efficient. I could buy chicken legs for 49 cents a pound at the local restaurant supply. Workers at chicken processing plants are deemed essential because if the supply chain of chicken is interrupted, Americans will go hungry. The economy depends on it.

As in all economies, the savings we enjoy are paid for with other costs. The scaling up of chicken growing and slaughtering creates a host of ethical dilemmas. Not so much dilemmas as problems really, and not just for the chickens, but for the humans involved too. 

None of this is news, but to reiterate, here are just a few of the problems: Birds are so tightly packed into farm buildings that they have to remain standing in a pile of their own feces, for their entire lives. They have to sleep standing up, which chickens won’t do unless forced. Chickens are fed all sorts of garbage. Actual garbage. It is common practice to feed chickens expired candy that has been ground up while still wrapped in plastic. If the circulation fans stop working in the buildings the chickens will die from the fumes of their own excrement. And, that happens. The power goes out in rural areas all the time. Generators run out of gas.

The human toll is great, too. Workers at processing plants are routinely hurt on the job and work in conditions that are cramped. Meat processing plants became a hot spot for corona virus. Pay is very low. The work is dangerous. And all, so we can spend less than $5 on a chick-fil-a or a box of nuggets, which, subsequently, is cooked by other humans who are under paid and over worked. So, it’s ugly. If you raise your own chickens for eggs and meat, you’re taking a stand against all of that ugliness. 

And, it’s not that difficult. Of all the animals I have stewarded in my life; dogs, cats, fish, bees, squirrels, a guinea pig… chickens are the easiest. Make sure they have food and water and safe place to sleep and they’re fine.

Jean Clawed Van Cutie & Nutello

The photograph of an angelic, dead chicken, hanging in the bathroom of a cooking school was there so that we could start to think about all of this, and maybe do something about it. And, maybe we could decide to stop eating chicken. Or we could find a small chicken farm and spend a little more for a bird that is raised well by a local farm family. Or we could think about raising our own chickens next season. Over the years I had conversations based on all of these notions many times, after someone saw William’s photograph. 

One afternoon, last summer, I walked into the bathroom of the school and the chicken was gone. I looked around the room and found the frame, its glass broken, tucked behind some shelves. The photograph was missing. I found it later, at the bottom of the garbage can, ripped to pieces. It made me angry and sad. I felt like I suffered a loss in the uphill fight of promoting local food. Not to mention the loss of a beautiful piece of art given to me by a friend.

That piece of art had function. Most of the people who saw it, ate chicken. And, it gave them pause. It made them think, even for a moment, about what it means to kill and consume animals. Which, is something worth thinking about. A thing worth doing better. 

I know what you’re thinking, because I thought it, too. Some insane vegan threw the photograph to the floor and ripped it to shreds. Maybe that’s true. But if that’s true, it’s a loss to the cause of veganism. No one gets to contemplate what it means to kill and consume animals after gazing upon William’s photograph anymore. There have been so many lost opportunities since it was destroyed. 

It’s more likely that the person who ripped up the photograph ate and still eats chicken. But they want to remain removed from the process of bird becoming sandwich. Which, if true, is at the core of the problem.

We don’t need to be more removed from our food sources. We need to come closer to them. We need to know our farms and our farmers. And we need to keep thinking about what it means to kill and consume animals even if the decision is to continue do just that.

I saved the shreds of photograph and puzzled them back together with a lot of help from Scotch tape and a ruler. I have ordered a new frame and plan to rehang it so that I might have a chance to continue having conversations about a dead bird that I raised, killed, cooked, and ate about a decade ago.