The NEW AMERICAN STATUS SYMBOL - GUESS? - The Washington Post REVE...

According to the main stream media(link at the bottom) there is a new status symbol in America and you're not going to believe what the super rich want in their lives to show off to the rest of the country.

IT'S THE CHICKEN!

That's right, the Washington Post(link at the bottom) came out with an article recently that the Silicon Valley's wealthiest residents are obsessed with having chickens and lots of them. Many are spending thousands on their flocks with expensive coops fashioned from name brand designers outfitted with the latest gadgetry.

After all, their owners are tech giants who work in Silicon Valley and they want nothing but the best for their flocks! These coops are outfitted with solar panels, motion sensor doors, recessed lighting, web cameras, thermostats and climate control and all of it's built with top rated housing materials that any home builder would use in construction. No cheap home depot OSB construction for these birds.

The chicken has always been the mainstay of the American homestead with its uses for simple families being primarily the egg and meat production. A homestead hatches out the eggs, hatches what they can and keeps a couple males for sires. The hens are kept for eggs and the roosters are butchered for meat.

There is a longing in the American spirit that harkens back to the days of the founding and settling of this country. People were never meant to spend all their days in a florescent lit cubicle, staring at a computer screen all day and then spend an hour in a metal box driving home. But the money is GOOD! So they will try and bring that nature to the concrete environment they have created.

So now in the Bay area of the west coast, the trend of raising chickens and having fresh eggs is what separates the haves and the have-nots.

But really, It's usually been the have-nots that have chickens...so this is kinda weird.

These new tech titan chicken owners who work at some of the largest leading tech firms in Sillicon Valley are spending big bucks on their birds. Some of them even let their hens walk around their houses with diapers on. They give them weekly baths and blow drys. And don't even think about cracked corns or kitchen scraps for these elite of the gallus domesticus (latin word for chicken). These fowl are dining on roasted Salmon, Watermelon and Steak! Only the best of the best for these urban California yard birds.

Some of the Silicon Valley residents are paying upwards of $300 for each chicken specialty breed. They are chosen based on their disposition of being calm and good pets. For some its about egg production. For others, its about the entertainment of owning these as pets. Experts in the article claim that under these pampered conditions, they can live over a decade.

Jaimie preparing a freshly butchered chicken in the kitchen

I think at some point, these chicken owners will tire of this new popular status symbol and like all other symbols of the rich, get tossed aside at some point. You see, they will realize that chickens only produce well for so long. Are they going to keep chickens pampered and diapered for a decade even they are no longer laying eggs? Doubtful. The article mentions that instead of bringing wine to a dinner party for a host gift, party goers are bringing eggs laid by their chickens.

Farmers have long learned that chickens get rotated out every so often to keep the flock fresh and laying. The old hens are tough and the only way they are edible is to be pressure cooked. Meat eaters, most of these Bay area residents are not. Again, this is a status symbol as the article states. There are some harsh life and death realities that come with keeping a flock productive.

Lets Be Real

Ah, but why focus on reality here? Why so serious? After all this is California we are talking about which detached from reality long ago.

Listen, I totally get wanting to get back to nature and see life how it really should be. It's one of the reasons we left the city. But trying to bring that life to the city is going to be an act of futility for most. My advice to these tech titans is to pull up stakes, let someone else code and program the driverless google car and get your family back to the creation of the Creator and live in it.

Around the world you have roughly 19 billion chickens that exist as a food source for the people who keep them. These in the homes of the Silicon Valley elite however, live unlike the others I'm sure. Only in America can you see an animal as dirty and disgusting at the chicken live like the finest of royalty. Today people talk about the privileged cats of Egypt. 3000 years from now, they may talk about the privileged chickens of San Francisco.