Back on March 1, 2016 I pulled a chair up to my computer desk, wrote an article and posted it on-line. Since I do that frequently, you’re probably wondering why that article on that day was a big deal. Well, because it was entitled “Why Did the Blogger Cross the Road? To Get Started.” It was the very first thing I wrote for this endeavor called “Randy’s Chicken Blog.” In that post I expressed the thought that at that moment, that post was both the first and the last entry in that new blog. And in the very last sentence of that post I suggested hopefully that “there will be much more to come.” Well, more did come. Here we are, four years and 176 posts further down the road!

I could expound at length about each of the posts I’ve written, but that would be pretty boring, right? Instead, I’ll spend the next paragraph saying a few words about general themes.

Way down at the bottom of the page of each of my posts there’s a button that says “About Randy’s Chicken Blog.” If you click that button, you’ll find four guiding principles that I operate under when I write my blog, and for that matter, when I live my life:

My chickens are really cool.
All chickens are really cool.
The majority of chickens being raised for meat or egg production, in spite of their inherent coolness, are treated cruelly. You can help make changes by your purchasing habits. Educate yourself! Read labels! Check company websites!
If you have the means and desire to keep some chickens, go for it!

While the subject of a particular post can vary from “here’s something I learned about caring for chickens” to “here’s something one my chickens did that was pretty darn hilarious” to “here’s a random thought that I captured as it meandered through my idle mind that is vaguely related to chickens,” every post really boils down to those four truths. With only four truths forming the foundation of this whole “Randy’s Chicken Blog” thing, you’d think I would start to run out of stuff to talk about. Well, maybe that will happen sometime—but right now I’ve got more post-its with blog post ideas stuck around my desk than you can shake a stick at.

Here’s the scoop on the life and times of a blog post: Whenever I put something new up, it always gets a certain amount of attention from all of you faithful folks who follow me on Facebook. Then the daily pageviews usually drop off. If you think of posts like newspapers, that makes sense. You publish something, folks read it, digest it, and toss the paper in the recycling bin. But, in fact, blog posts, once posted, are always there—waiting for folks using search engines to find them. So, forget newspapers. Blog posts are really more like library books—they’re always there on the shelf waiting for somebody to check them out.

When I wrote that very first post, I was pleasantly surprised when multitudes of folks gathered at my blog to check it out right away. At least twenty of them! They were mostly my friends. The ones that weren’t my friends were my relatives. I love every one of them. Happily, my readership has grown and now I’m getting in the neighborhood of 2000 page-views a month—people from Keokuk, Iowa to Malé, Kaafu, Maldives, and a few spots in between. While some are faithful followers, the bulk of them, about 70%, find their way to my blog through a search engine. They’re at the library of the worldwide web looking for a book on a specific subject! What subjects are popular? As you’ll soon see, it’s all over the map! I always think the last thing I’ve posted is THE best and that people will flock to it—like a flock of chickens flocking to um…something that a flock of chickens will flock to. In general, I’m usually wrong about all that flocking. But there are those posts that get a lot of attention from the beginning and continue to draw new readers every day. And there are those posts that collect dust on the virtual bookshelf for a period of time and then suddenly start drawing in a ton of readers. Why? Wish I knew. And of course, there are the posts that land smack on the murky shelf of obscurity on day one and stay there forever. Let us speak no more of those.

Here are my five most looked-at posts. Why are these five the most popular? Dunno. But thanks, everybody, for reading them!

5th: Sweater Girls

“Sweater Girls,” from November 2016, falls under the category of “Something funny happened in the coop.” In this case, it all goes back to the time when chicken sweaters were “The Big Fashion Thing.” Remember that? Maybe not. It actually only lasted a day in my coop. But it was a day the Hipster Hens will never forget.

4th: Fixing Those Pesky Leaking Chicken Water Founts

“Fixing Those Pesky Leaking Chicken Water Founts” is one of those “coop equipment” sort of posts from June 2016. It’s one of those posts that just sort of sat there for the first year or so, then suddenly took off. The folks who are reading it no doubt google their way to my post because their water fount is spewing water all over the coop floor. In this post, I not only talk about why water founts leak, but actually tell how to repair them. And I throw in a magic trick to boot!

3rd: Are Chickens Dinosaurs?

“Are Chickens Dinosaurs?” from February, 2018 is another post that nobody was reading—until suddenly lots of people were reading it. It’s been my most-read post every month since last summer. I wrote this post because I kept hearing and reading statements about how chickens were basically second-cousins to, or maybe directly descended from, or at least best friends with T. rex. I wasn’t sure that I should believe any of it. So, I looked into it and wrote this post. And now you’re wondering, “Yeah! What’s the deal with T. rex and chickens?!” Click up there at the top and the truth will be revealed!

2nd: Marek’s Disease: Six Things You Should Know

“Marek’s Disease: Six Things You Should Know” from August, 2018 is an extremely long post, is somewhat technical, a bit controversial, and the subject is depressing. Yet, it was popular out of the gate. Sadly, a lot of flock-keepers are searching for information because their birds are suffering and dying from this devastating disease. I’m planning a rewrite of this post to expand on and clarify a few things, but I think the post in its current form does a good job of explaining that Marek’s is lurking practically everywhere and since there’s no cure, flock biosecurity and vaccination are really important.

1st: A Carton of Eggs: Part 2 – ALDI’s Goldhen Farm Fresh Eggs

“A Carton of Eggs: Part 2 - ALDI’s Goldhen Farm Fresh Eggs” from April, 2017 has had more pageviews than my next ten posts combined. Why? Maybe because the brand of eggs I talk about in this post is a popular brand from a national supermarket chain. And maybe because more and more people want to know what they’re eating. In March, 2017 I wrote the first post of what became a 5-part series about different brands of eggs—with the focus on the information on the egg carton. The main function of cartons is to keep a dozen fragile eggs grouped together and cushioned. But it is also a blank canvas that can be filled with written and visual messages. Some of those messages are subliminal—ever notice that the pictures are usually rural and outdoorsy while words like “country”, “sunny”, “brook”, and “meadow” keep popping up in the brand names—even brands selling eggs from hens in dismal factory farms who will never see a brook or a meadow, or even the sky in their entire lives. And some of the messages are very misleading. I explore all that stuff in this series. I’m toying with the idea of expanding the series, and perhaps even revisiting some of the older posts. It has been almost three years since I wrote about Goldhen eggs. Has anything changed? It’s probably worthwhile to find out!

And finally, a few last words about the blog: I’m not a professional blogger in the sense that I do this to make a living. (I do run a few ads, and I’ve raked in something like $17 from them—I don’t suggest chicken blogging as a career choice for most folks.) I’m a retired guy and I’ve got these chickens. And I enjoy spending my Sundays writing about them. I might very well be writing all this even if I was just stuffing all of it in folders and storing it in dusty boxes under my bed. But pleasantly, I write all this and then it gets read by you! And even more pleasantly, there seem to be more of you every day. So, thanks, everybody! Sincerely, thanks!