Some women are cat ladies. Sy Montgomery is a chicken lady instead. She kept chickens as pets for over 20 years. Her book “What the Chicken Knows: A New Appreciation of the World’s Most Familiar Bird” captures her experiences with chickens on her rural homestead. It relates her travels in what she terms the “chicken universe,” and what she’s learned about and learned from chickens while in it.
Montgomery began raising chickens after she and her husband bought a 150-year-old farmhouse in rural New Hampshire in the late 1980s. A neighbor gave her 12 hen chicks. Montgomery didn’t know what to expect. But raising the birds from chicks to hens left her hooked. She continued keeping chickens until the 2010s.
