Not-collecting chickens has become an important part of our life in the last couple of years! If you’ve ever looked at our Facebook page on a Tuesday, and wondered why on earth there are so many posts about chickens, and no posts about our handbell music, we’ll explain it here.

How the whole chicken adventure started

In October 2019, we bought our sweet little Victorian cottage at Bay View, in northern Michigan. As is usual with cottage sales at the Bay View Association, the previous owner included some furniture and other items in the sale. One of these items, left on a shelf in the kitchen, was a chicken.

This sweet chicken seemed lonely, as the only chicken in our kitchen. The top of the microwave looked vast and empty, so we bought a red chicken with white spots to go on top of it. Then that chicken clearly needed a friend. During a romantic stroll around our local HomeGoods, we saw a white chicken that looked like the perfect companion to sit on the microwave. And so it continued. Before we knew it, we had chickens in our cottage. Not a lot of chickens, but definitely some.

Actual collectors of chickens

In this world, it is well known that some people are actual collectors of chickens. Some people collect coins, stamps, hippos, porcelain dolls, owls, or other random things. Some people collect chickens. They are happy and proud to be actual collectors of chickens. They have shelves in their homes, for the chickens, and they eagerly search for chickens in antiques stores and thrift shops, to increase their collection. Some people specialize in collecting a particular kind of chicken – like ceramic chickens, for example, or chicken kitchenware.

Actual collectors of real, live chickens

Some people like to collect real, live chickens. Backyard chickens are a big thing these days, and social media is full of photos and videos of happy people with their chickens. They sit outside and watch their chickens, they collect eggs, and they post videos of their chickens doing amusing things during the day. It’s a good life, if that’s what you want to do.

It’s a slippery slope

Collecting chickens can be a slippery slope. You can find chickens everywhere. They’re in antiques stores, thrift shops and grocery stores. You find them in art galleries and gift shops, and even at farmers’ markets and museums. The chickens that are available for purchase can be very tempting. You buy one or two chickens, and yes, they’re sweet. Family members start giving you chicken-items for birthdays and Christmas, and the chickens start to pile up in your home. You put up a couple more shelves, or replace your cute little accent cabinet with a much taller cupboard that has more space inside. Before you know it, you’re renting a storage unit on the edge of town, and then you have to move into it, because the chickens have completely taken over your home, and your kids aren’t talking to you any more, out of fear that they’ll inherit them all.

Why we started not-collecting chickens

We reached a point where people were starting to think that we were collecting chickens. That was understandable, because we’d shared photos of some of our chickens on social media. However, we definitely didn’t want to become actual collectors of chickens. We decided to prove that we weren’t, by taking photos of all the chickens we saw, but didn’t collect. This would be the evidence that we were officially not collecting chickens. We added the all-important hyphen, and it became known as Not-Collecting Chickens. It’s even a hashtag on Facebook now – #NotCollectingChickens. Hyphens don’t work with hashtags, of course, so you just have to remember that it’s there in secret.

How to not-collect a chicken

• See a chicken as you go about your daily life. This could be a real, live chicken, or it could be some other kind of chicken. Not a food-chicken, but perhaps a carved, wooden chicken, or a metal chicken, or a ceramic chicken, a chicken mug, or a chicken on a t-shirt. You get the idea. There are not-collectable chickens everywhere.
  
• Take a photo of the chicken. Don’t take the chicken home with you. Note that it’s helpful if you don’t pick up the chicken and start to bond with it. Admiring the cuteness is fine, but once you start to imagine where the chicken could sit in your living room, you’re running the risk of turning into an actual collector of chickens. It’s entirely up to you, but do you really need chickens?
  
• Send the photo to us for the not-collection. You can post it on our Facebook page, or click on the message button to send it privately if you don’t want to risk other people seeing it before we do.
  
• Congratulations! You have successfully not-collected a chicken! Now find some more!

Why is the hyphen so important?

If you think about it, there’s a big difference between not collecting chickens, and not-collecting chickens. There are lots of people who don’t collect chickens, after all. They don’t even think about chickens. They don’t look for them in thrift stores, and they don’t yell “CHICKEN!” as they drive past one in someone’s back yard, then turn around and go back to take a photo of it. You can ask someone if they collect chickens, and they’ll reply that no, they don’t collect chickens (unless they do, of course).

The art of not-collecting chickens is a more deliberate thing. You have to take a photo of the chicken, for a start, as proof of the successful not-collection! That’s why the hyphen matters. It’s the difference between simply not collecting chickens, and actively seeking out chickens to not-collect, and not-collecting them by taking the photo without taking the chicken home.

Extreme temptation

Some chickens are very tempting. You’ll see them in the thrift stores and gift shops, and you’ll love the cuteness of them, and their sweet little head-thingies and underbeak dangly bits! They might have soft wings, or fluffy little underage chickens with them. The choice is always yours. If you are catastrophically tempted by a chicken, and you end up taking it home, don’t panic.

The photo below shows us being seriously tempted by MASSIVE RED CHRISTMAS CHICKENS in our local Tractor Supply place. We were able to not-collect these successfully, but it wasn’t easy. We were quite obsessed with these MASSIVE RED CHRISTMAS CHICKENS for a while. Are we over them now? Well, no. We still don’t have one on our porch, though. Sometimes the number on the price tag helps to make a chicken more not-collectable.

Occasional adoption doesn’t count as collecting

There are definitely some situations where it’s okay to take a chicken home with you. There is no need for guilt at this point. Occasional adoption doesn’t count as collecting. It’s a totally different thing. There are also several other situations where taking a chicken home won’t turn you into an actual collector of chickens:

• When a chicken is a gift. If someone gives you a chicken (even if they say, “I know you collect chickens!”), it’s okay to take the chicken, and it totally won’t count as collecting. It would be very rude to tell someone that you don’t want a chicken, especially as it might be a very nice chicken. Take the chicken, adopt it into your home, and send us a photo of it for our not-collection. Even if someone thinks YOU are an actual collector of chickens, WE are definitely not.
  
• When a chicken is handmade. If you make a chicken, that definitely shouldn’t count as collecting. If you have crochet skills, or you know how to knit a chicken, it’s perfectly acceptable to create a chicken and keep it in your home. Even if you made one out of a paper plate, it still wouldn’t count as collecting if you decided to keep it.
  
• When a chicken is handmade and is a gift. If someone gives you a chicken that they’ve made themselves, that also would not count as collecting. To be given a handmade chicken is a very special thing, and no one should ever say no-thank-you to a handmade chicken. Think of the love and time that went into creating that chicken!
  
• When it’s an Emotional Support Chicken. We’ve probably all seen Emotional Support Chickens. They’re usually crocheted or knitted, and they look very sweet and emotionally supportive. If you have an Emotional Support Chicken, we’re pretty sure that it’s illegal for anyone to suggest that you’re an actual collector of chickens. That chicken is providing a vital service for your mental and emotional health, and that definitely doesn’t make you an actual collector of chickens!
  
• When you inherit a chicken. Inheriting a chicken is a very special privilege. It definitely doesn’t count as collecting. Even if you inherit someone’s entire chicken collection, you can still claim it as an occasional adoption situation. Just don’t add to it. You know the risks. Storage units are expensive.
  
• When you have struggled with temptation, and you already love the chicken. Chickens need homes. If you are overcome by temptation in the antiques store, you can purchase the chicken if you really want to, and it will just count as an occasional adoption situation. Adopt the chicken, take it to your home, and resolve to not-collect the next one you see. Repeat as many times as you need to.

Chicken Tuesday

Chicken Tuesday now has its own hashtag on Facebook! If you go to our Facebook page, and it happens to be a Tuesday, you’ll see photos of chickens, videos of chickens, news stories about chickens, and chicken crafts. Larry might even be wearing a chicken t-shirt. Best of all, Chicken Tuesday is when we share the photos of the chickens that we and our friends have not-collected in recent weeks! We have several Facebook albums filled with not-collected chickens now, and we add to the not-collection every week.

We know that some people talk about tacos on Tuesday, but that’s not a thing for us.

Chicken of the Week

On Tuesdays, if there is a particularly special chicken, that chicken will get the Chicken of the Week award! There are no prizes if your chicken is chosen to be Chicken of the Week, but it’s exciting anyway! We have to admit that chickens chosen for this special award are often handmade, by people with knitting or crochet skills. Eileen’s chicken in the photo above was a recipient of the Chicken of the Week award, for example. Here is another:

Not-chickens

If you start not-collecting chickens, you’ll see them everywhere. Sometimes you’ll even notice something that looks like a chicken, and you’ll take a photo, then you’ll realize that it wasn’t actually a chicken. It was just a vaguely chicken-shaped item, or something that looked like a chicken because of a shadow. When that happened to us a few times, we decided to make it okay to not-collect not-chickens too. After all, why waste a perfectly good chicken-ish photo? Here is an example of a not-chicken:

Not not-collecting turkeys

Sometimes, when we’re out not-collecting chickens, we notice that there are a lot of turkeys. This happens often in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, but sometimes at other times of the year too. Larry is always very sad to find turkeys, because we’re not not-collecting turkeys.

Thank you to everyone who’s joined in the fun!

We’re genuinely thankful to everyone who’s joined us in not-collecting chickens, and celebrating Chicken Tuesday with us each week! If you’ve shared photos of your chickens, or crocheted a chicken, or sent us pictures of chickens that you’ve managed to not-collect on your travels – thank you! We couldn’t do this without you! Well, okay, we probably could. Yes, we still would. It wouldn’t be as much fun, though!