What came first - the chicken or the egg? It's time to lay that conundrum to rest, says actor Sam Neill. The chicken. Off the back of his adoring posts on social media, he writes
Sam Neill - the truth is his chooks "keep him" - rather than the reverse being true.
The sky they'd never seen before and even walking on grass was an alarming, novel experience. The real world was utterly perplexing for them.
But after a few weeks they'd recovered and now are pretty hard to tell from my old hens that have been with me for years.
I have two roosters who were delighted to add even more girlfriends to their already bulging harems, so we had a population explosion after a wild summer of free love in the farmyard.
![Feral, rather than freerange chooks, at Sam Neill's Central Otago home.](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/resizer/v2/DPJETCZTYCIRRK5QRJZBGYIFOE.jpg?auth=831a76f97f4b73696bcdfa8eeb56f0807050de5ab2777005535a6e3eb0af196c&width=16&height=22&quality=70&smart=true)
I like having chickens around. A contented chicken makes the most soothing noise. One or two take advantage though.
There is a curious red hen called Bryce Dallas Howard who likes to peer in my windows and see what I'm up to in the house.
I've tried to persuade her that privacy is a basic human right but that just seems to encourage her.
She sleeps at my front door sometimes, so you need to watch where you step in the morning. Maybe she thinks she has adopted me.
And that's it - I like to call myself a chicken owner .
The reverse is probably true: they own me.