I researched the beginnings of chickens in Egypt and discovered that all evidence points to their arrival with the Persian conquest of 425 BC. But there’s a problem. There are ancient recorded instances of chickens clucking and pecking around Egypt before the Persians arrived. Way before! Thousands of years!

Egypt: The pyramids. The desert. The Nile. The chickens.
Yes, the chickens.
In 1323, an Irish friar named Simon Fitzsimmons traveled to Cairo. He was amazed by the sight of thousands of chickens in the streets of Cairo; pecking up grain that had fallen from the bags carried by passing camels.
In 2023 I traveled to Egypt. I was also amazed.

Bullfighting: When you remove the pageantry, costumes, and choreography, it is animal slaughter for amusement. We can’t expect good lives for chickens until all domestic animals are treated with the same humane respect.

I traveled through beautiful Portugal and Spain. And I found chickens!

I ran into chickens everywhere I went in Vietnam and Cambodia: The urban streets of Hanoi, the hamlets along the Mekong River in Cambodia, pecking and scratching on the grounds of Buddhist monasteries, amongst the ruins of ancient Angkorian temples, and for sale in the local markets. Warning: Like everywhere else in the world, the people of Southeast Asia eat chickens, and that is discussed here. They also eat eggs and any number of things we don’t eat in the US.