Yet we are more like chickens than you might think. Chickens have self-awareness: they can observe, evaluate and adjust their own behaviour. They remember as many as a hundred other conspecifics and humans, and experience emotions such as sadness, joy, boredom and even depression. Chickens seek human contact, love cuddling and companionship. In addition, this useful animal digests nearly 50 kilos of kitchen waste every year. In the mythology of the ancient Greeks, the chicken symbolises life, death and rebirth.
The colourful variety of chicken breeds that roam this matriarchy are as diverse as humans. Egg towers mark this living diorama. The futuristic mother hen or parent hen acts as the night coop. Everything is designed around the welfare of the chicken. For the feeders and toys, the artist reused materials from the pottery of St Paul’s Abbey.
In a way, this “ladies only” community of chickens is reminiscent of monastic communities. There too, the focus is not on the individual, but on something greater – the divine. People live together, care and reflect on life and death. This Chicken Paradise ties in with the past of this place. In 1956, the brothers of St Paul’s Abbey started a chicken-breeding business that was a household name in the Netherlands for many years. Later, the space was converted into a ceramics workshop. At the end of the route you will visit this place.