‘Intensely practical and rewarding’: why keeping chickens is a must for any good royal
Prince Harry and Meghan are by no means the first members of the Royal family to show an interest in our feathered friends. Archie’s Chick Inn, in which Oprah Winfrey communed with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their brood of rescue fowl, is just the latest in a long line of illustrious hen coops.
Perhaps it’s a nod to the fresh Prince of California’s own past: Prince Charles is the Royal family’s most avid chicken keeper. Indeed, Highgrove is sometimes known as Cluckingham Palace. He is known to feed the hens and collect his own eggs for his breakfast at home each morning. He also hosts hen-husbandry courses there for the Poultry Club of Great Britain and oversees their content - with an emphasis, naturally, on organic farming and the welfare of animals.
Prince William shares the same enthusiasm. Sources suggest Anmer Hall in Norfolk, where the family spent lockdown, has been a hen-house of chicken-based activity. It was reported that Princess George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis have learnt how to rear the birds from chicks, collecting the eggs each morning with Kate before using them in the kitchen.
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert also shared an interest in breeding and keeping chickens, which prompted a fashion for breeding and exhibiting chickens all round the UK. In 1848 The Illustrated London News breathlessly reported that Her Majesty was importing the first feathered-footed white Cochin chickens from China seen in Britain. It is to be hoped the birds liked their new quarters: “Her Majesty’s collection of fowls is very considerable, occupying half a dozen very extensive yards, several small fields and numerous feeding houses… it is in the new fowl house that the more curious birds are kept. The Cochin China Fowls - extraordinary birds of gigantic size.”
The Empress’s 50 years on the throne were even celebrated with the Diamond Jubilee Orpington - a magnificent if low-slung brown and white speckled bird that bears a passing resemblance to the monarch herself and one that Prince Charles also champions.
Perhaps the most famous hen doyenne is ‘Debo’, The late Duchess of Devonshire. The former Chatelaine of Chatsworth, and the last of the charismatic Mitford sisters, was a keen bird fancier and revealed that during a photo shoot, the photographer Bruce Weber “made me wear a red satin Balmain ball dress to feed my chickens.” She followed a chicken theme for the titles of her best-selling books: Counting my Chickens: And Other Home Thoughts and Home to Roost and Other Peckings.
She would sell their eggs in her farm shop in the village of Chatsworth, later opening a branch in London selling eggs and other food made on the estate and revelled in ‘the wonderful world of domestic poultry’. She had long experience and from the age of six, she ran a racket selling her own mother the eggs from the chicken she raised: “It was quite a good business,” she recalled. “She gave me the feed for the chickens, and I sold her the eggs.”
More recently, Isabella Rossellini, the actor/film-maker daughter of Ingrid Bergman, wrote a memoir of raising heritage-breed birds on her Long Island farm called “My Chickens and I”. She keeps 100 of them, many with names. She argues that contrary to popular opinion, chickens have an abundance of personality. “Although we recognise only the extreme personalities- the ones that are very extrovert or very shy,” she says.
Perhaps this is why chickens have garnered the most illustrious of fans. They are intensely practical and rewarding, they’re unshowy, but - contrary to expectations they have a huge amount of character. Plus you need a lot of space to look after them properly as Irish chef Clodagh McKenna has found.
She now lives with her fiance The Honourable Harry Herbert, CEO of Highclere Thoroughbred Racing, at Broadspear on the Highclere Estate (aka Downton Abbey). She started keeping hens last year - (together with bees and worms), as part of her sustainable working homestead and is now an ambassador of posh egg purveyor, Clarence Court. “I had wanted to keep hens for years but was always nervous about it. Although not sure why as they are a dream to look after. The first night they arrived I barely slept - I was so worried about them,” says McKenna.
"I can't imagine life now without my beautiful Burford Brown Girls. I have six in total, their names are Tina (after Tina Turner), Eggy Pop, Henneth Paltrow, Saoirse (freedom in Irish), Goldie Hen, and Yolko Ono. The first thing I do every morning is pull on my wellies and check on the girls and gather the overnight eggs for breakfast. The cheery chat and excitement first thing in the morning put me in such a good mood. Oh the eggs, oh my Lord the eggs - nothing beats a Burford Brown freshly laid egg."
Other, perhaps more flamboyant, members of the chicken club include Elizabeth Hurley, Helen Hunt, Rachel Weisz and Martha Stewart. Miley Cyrus rescued her chickens from the set of Hannah Montana, for which she was awarded a Compassionate Citizen Award by Animal Rights Organisation, PETA. While Brazilian supermodel Gisele has embraced all elements of hen-keeping and told Food and Wine Magazine: “I have a beautiful garden in LA where I raise chickens. We have very little waste because the chickens eat all of the vegetable scraps, and anything they won’t eat, I put in my compost pile with the chicken poo.”
Perhaps the second most illustrious chicken owner to hit our screens this week, is the woman hailed as ‘America’s Queen’. Oprah Winfrey keeps chickens at her holiday home in Hawaii. Perhaps she is familiar with the saying: “you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs…”
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