Who can say they don't have childhood memories in which hens are the protagonists? Very few! Indeed a long time to breed these barn animals it was a widespread practice among those who had enough space, perhaps living in the countryside. It is not difficult to find in one's memory an uncle or a grandmother who they raised chickens, along with other small farmyard animals. Yet today it has become much rarer and indeed hens are being chosen more and more often as pets.
Hens fleeing from the stable: because they are more and more often found at home
In the common imagination the hen appears in a rural context, surrounded by the poultry that breeders and farmers look after to feed. The hen is therefore traditionally perceived as an animal that gives sustenance to man, used to survive by feeding on its derivatives or through the commercialization of eggs. Today, however, this view of the hen has changed a lot and more and more often these animals become a real one pet pet. It is not excluded that even the farmers become attached to the hens and keep them with them even when, due to old age, they no longer produce eggs.
However, today we are witnessing a very different phenomenon, in which people who have nothing to do with the context of the farm, choose to buy a few hens to let them run around in the garden, as if it were a dog or a cat.
This turnaround is motivated by the changes that our society is experiencing, due to the introduction of industrial logic and intensive farming, which has considerably reduced the need to have its own domestic breeding. However, this has also led to an increase in people's sensitivity towards the health conditions of these animals, which large retailers often treat as objects, forcing them into inhuman situations that affect not only their mental but also physical well-being, requiring the use of drugs that the buyer then consumes when he buys a chicken breast or eggs at the supermarket. Today people have become aware of the real conditions of intensive farms and, both for a health issue and for a greater sensitivity towards animal treatments, they often choose to have their own flock of domestic hens.
Domestic, garden and apartment hens
Therefore, the number of people returning to small backyard farms increases, resorting to chicken coops for domestic hens to be placed in the garden. It often happens that these gardens belong to owners who live in the city or in any case certainly not to farmers, so the classic courtyard cages are replaced with modern and design chicken coops, carefully finished and able to give the garden an elegant touch, almost as if it were a beautiful dog house.
However, the phenomenon of hens in the house: whether it is an apartment or a villa, different species of hens are welcomed indoors, becoming real pet pet. This is especially allowed by the character of these animals, which have lived with humans for millennia. The hen is in fact good, calm, docile and manages to relate effectively with children. There are not rare cases of pet therapy in which the hen is used to help autistic children or even the elderly. In any case, the phenomenon of pet hen remains niche, but marks an interesting trend, which speaks of how our habits can change with the context we live in.
