Cotton was my father’s whole life. On his Mississippi Delta farm, he grew it for fifty-two years, and from the time he plowed with mules until the day he shipped his last bale from his own gin, he devoted every waking minute to his crops, and for the life of him he couldn’t understand why I was interested in other things.
One day he remarked to my lifelong friend and mentor Jaybird, “If my son paid as much attention to managing this farm as he does to his honeybees, garden, ducks, geese, turkeys, guineas, and chickens, he might amount to something — especially those chickens.”
“Shoot, Boss, he even carries on conversations with his chickens.”
I got my fondness for fowl from Mama. Each afternoon, her feed call incited a stampede among her flock as they flapped toward her from all directions, squawking a serenade that was music to her ears. She talked to her chickens; I talked to mine.
One day I read an advertisement in a poultry magazine for Araucana hens, claiming that they laid blue eggs in a variety of shades. I ordered fifty biddies.
I couldn’t wait for the hens to start laying, hoping their eggs really would be blue. The day I ran into Mama’s kitchen with a cobalt blue egg, she called her friends and described it as if I’d brought her a gift from the Rajah of India.
Word spread, and folks bought my blue eggs as fast as the hens laid them, especially at Easter. I converted a shack into the “Chicken Hilton,” as Jaybird called it, and like Mama, I always talked to the flock at feeding time.
I remembered studying how Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov elicited conditioned responses from dogs by making certain sounds prior to giving them favorite snacks, so I conducted a similar experiment with the Araucanas.
Aware that chickens can’t resist corn, I would amble around the henhouse each day, dropping kernels and singing a ditty: “Go ’round the house, go ’round the house.”
One day, I said to Jaybird, “You’re always making fun of me about talking to my chickens; I’m fixing to show you something you won’t believe.”
“I still can’t believe that the boy I helped raise is crazy enough to carry on conversations with chickens … but show me anyway.”
We stood outside the chicken yard, and I sang, “Go ’round the house.” Immediately the flock trotted around the house. My Pavlov experiment worked.
Dumbfounded, Jaybird told Dad, “You gotta see it to believe it. When Junior talks to his chickens, they understand him!”
Late one evening as I was about to feed the chickens, they showed up. “Go ’round the house,” I sang, and obediently the hens trotted around the Chicken Hilton.
“This beats all, Jaybird. I’ve got a farm manager who sells blue eggs laid by hens from a foreign country that understand him when he speaks English.”
Wagging his head woefully, Jaybird groaned, “You are dead right, Boss: This beats all.”
Jimmy Reed is an Oxford, Mississippi resident, Ole Miss and Delta State University alumnus, Vietnam Era Army Veteran, former Mississippi Delta cotton farmer and ginner, author, and retired college teacher.
This story is a selection from Jimmy Reed’s latest book, entitled The Jaybird Tales.
Copies, including personalized autographs, can be reserved by notifying the author via email (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).
Cotton was my father’s whole life. On his Mississippi Delta farm, he grew it for fifty-two years, and from the time he plowed with mules until the day he shipped his last bale from his own gin, he devoted every waking minute to his crops, and for the life of him he couldn’t understand why I was interested in other things.
One day he remarked to my lifelong friend and mentor Jaybird, “If my son paid as much attention to managing this farm as he does to his honeybees, garden, ducks, geese, turkeys, guineas, and chickens, he might amount to something — especially those chickens.” 
