Fowler is the only rooster before Rocky comes along. Yet all the hens (save two) lay eggs before he appears and after he leaves, briefly. Think about it.
Further, the hens freely give away their eggs to be harvested, but only get really upset when they find out they're going to be harvested.
In Real Life, hens lay unfertilized eggs despite never having seen a rooster.
Modern hens in general are specifically bred to produce eggs without the help of a rooster. The eggs you buy at the supermarket and eat for breakfast are unfertilized.
Hens don't need roosters around to lay eggs and they don't care that much about their eggs unless, as the troper below says, they're going "broody" with them. In fact, if you take an egg right out from under a hen who's just laid it and throw it on the ground and break it, they will go totally nuts with excitement and they'll devour it, shell included. Also, as I can once again say from previous experience, some of them have no problem eating dead chicks, particularly if the chick died only partially hatched. Think about THAT in a human context.
Also, modern hens don't care if you walk off with their eggs, so long as they aren't sitting on them. An exception happens when a hen goes "broody," at which point she'll sit on about a dozen until they hatch.
If we look at it in the rules of the movie, the chickens are still prisoners and have little say in what happens to them; it's possible that they've been there long enough to get resigned to the fact that their eggs are going to be taken from them. Note that one of the things Ginger enthuses about when making her speech about life outside the farm is the freedom to keep their own eggs.
More to the point, where do all those chicks come from at the end? Fowler and Rocky are still the only two Roosters.
They're probably all Rocky's - roosters aren't really into monogamy.
There's the off chance of wild roosters too.
The answer's pretty obvious isn't it? Fowler and Rockey got busy!
One mated pair of chickens can, in some cases, have large clutches of babies, so maybe the large amount of baby chickens at the end are separate clutches each belonging to different couples. One clutch was likely sired by Rocky with Ginger, while Fowler sired the other (probably with Bunty, considering the slight Ship Tease between them).
Bad business sense
If the Tweedys turned all their chickens into pies, that would be the end of their profits. They wouldn't have any chickens to make a second batch with, much less get rich or fill the stores with "box upon box of Mrs. Tweedy's Homemade Chicken Pies".
They would buy more chickens (for a price cheaper than what they'll be selling their pies for)
That's one option, but since they're already all set up to farm chickens it'd probably make more sense to buy a couple of roosters, depending on how much space they have and how many pies they want to make.
Being set up to raise chickens isn't the same thing as being set up to hatch chicks. Many meat chicken producers buy day-old chicks from hatcheries and raise them to butchering size.
This troper was bothered with that particular aspect of Mrs. Tweedy's plan, until he realized that Mrs. Tweedy is characterized as a sociopath. According to the Hare checklist, sociopaths and psychopaths tend to be deficient in long-term planning skills. Mrs. Tweedy will probably eat through the farm's capital (the chickens) for short-term profit. As an added bonus, Mr. Tweedy apparently inherited the farm from his father, so it would be entirely in character for Mrs. Tweedy to destroy her long-suffering husband's family business as a final cruelty to him.
Wait a minute....
I'm just wondering... in the final scene when it seems like Mrs. Tweedy cuts Ginger's head, and then we see that she just ducked, how is she able to hold the lights with all of Mrs. Tweedy's bodyweight for several seconds?
Hey wait. Why would Mrs. Tweedy not believe Mr. Tweedy about the chickens being organized? 2 minutes into the movie and they're forming lines and standing at her attention!
I think what it means is that Mrs. Tweedy believes the chickens to be stupid and blindly obedient (hence the lining up,) while Mr. Tweedy believes they're smarter than that and are hiding something.
Someone else mentioned this in the Fridge, but basically, since Mr. Tweedy had been relegated to patrolling the farm, he had witnessed first hand, and stopped, Ginger's escape attempts. Also, he noticed that whenever anything strange happened, whether an escape attempt or if the chickens were demonstrating some "un-chicken like" behavior, Ginger was always around, thus he deduced that Ginger was the one organizing them.
Title not name, how strange.
Why the Tweedys always refer to each other by "Mr" and "Mrs" and never by their first name ?
It's heavily implied that they only ever got married for business purposes. They don't like each other enough to refer to one another any other way.
That was quite common in rural Yorkshire at that time.
Even more common in older times, where even amiable couples would refer to each other like that. Victorian novels are full of examples like that.
In the Norwegian dub (and possibly others) Mr. and Mrs. Tweedy were given the first names of Sissel and Mikkel respectively (while "Tweedy" became "Tvilsheim"), though they kept the formality by calling each other's full names.
It kind of makes some modicum of sense as Chicken Run is set during the 1950s. At one point, Mrs. Tweedy says her name is "Melisha" and, in the credits or production notes, Mr. Tweedy is named "Willard".
A Rooster with a Tricycle.
Where'd Rocky get that tricycle? We see him suddenly riding a trike with no explanation of how he got it. Where did he get that trike?
He stole it from a toddler in a deleted scene.
How big is the machine?
The Pie Machine is awesome visually, but it does have me asking an important question: just how much unused space does that machine actually have? So you attach chickens by their feet to the conveyor belt, and they're dropped into the main part of the machine along with the vegetables. The veggies are chopped up offscreen and all that, but then where do the chicken choppings go? The indication is that they're ground up by the gears right below, but then why the ramp between the grinder and the dough flattening station?
Also, are you actually supposed to drop live, unplucked chickens straight into the grinder? Won't the pies be full of bones and feathers? Or was Mr. Tweedy too stupid to understand that?
Considering that Mrs Tweedy (who would be intelligent enough to know that the chickens should have to be properly prepared before being put in the machine) was there when Ginger was used to test the machine and said nothing, I'd be resigned to actually agree that maybe putting live chickens in is the correct thing. Also remember when the machine is fixed, she tells Mr Tweedy to get all the chickens. If the entire flock had to be slaughtered and prepared, it would take a fairly long time.
Something to note: we see that the veg that goes in the pies is properly peeled and chopped (in pretty uniform chunks too). If we assume that that's the same veg that goes in when Rocky goes in, the machine is able to prepare veg. Could it be a stretch that it could properly prepare chickens? Bear in mind, we don't see anything of the chicken preparations besides the saw blades.
Is there only a setting on the machine to do a full batch of pies? Obviously it makes for a better scenario when Rocky keeps falling into them in the oven, but Ginger is only one small chicken and she'd never provide enough meat for all those pies. Surely it's a waste of ingredients to make a full production when they were only using Ginger for a test run.
Chicken Peddling
How come Ginger didn't have a pedal station in the Crate? She's lounging around in the main area, but she's not pedaling? What's up with that? Is this leader's privilege or something that she didn't have to pedal or something?
I'd call it leader's privilege, but it's not all unjustified. Without Ginger, the chickens can't organize or plan for crap. She had been coming up with dozens of plans for all of them to escape their certain death (when she could've escaped on her own if she wanted to, probably; Rocky made it look easy to do it on your own) and she was almost always in the most risky spot, she had the overall idea of the Crate and was supervising the whole thing, probably including how Fowler would pilot it. She's also great at boosting the others' morality. I think it's fair to assume that this time they told her "Nah, it's okay, no need for you to pilot this time, just check if everyone's going well".
Also, keep in mind that Fowler was initially in the pedal section, before revealing that he never flew a plane. So they probably planned "We have X chickens, Fowler will be in front, and Mac will be in Navigations." But during the entire flight, Fowler's old seat remains vacant. That was probably planned to be Ginger's, she just never got a chance to take that seat on-camera.
Lying Roosters and Seein' through the fibs
I'm getting this off the Characters section. I had the impression that Nick at least always knew Rocky was lying about laying eggs but just wanted to see the chickens make fools of themselves (I'm thinking especially his "Sucker" comment to Fetcher). Fetcher, at least, would have been dim-witted enough to not know that and genuinely thought roosters laid eggs. Is there one way or another to know definitely if Nick was just as ignorant until the "But roosters don't lay eggs, do they?" comment, and that he did actually ask his mum?
I think you're giving Nick way too much credit here. He and Fetcher are pretty much the stereotypical Those Two Guys you get in movies like this: one fat and short (Nick), one tall and thin (Fetcher), both stupid but one that's slightly more sensible/Genre Savvy than the other. Emphasis on the slightly. Nick certainly considers himself wildly superior in intelligence than Fetcher but that's not really saying much. The rats are basically the rodent equivalent of shady, bordering-on-con-men salesmen. The "sucker" comment after they make the deal with Rocky is probably due to the fact that he and Fetcher clearly think they're getting the better end of the deal and have essentially swindled Rocky out of a month's worth of eggs (note how they're trying to "big up" the heist when they got the items they're delivering at the start of the scene, making it seem more daring than it probably was). Likewise, his "it's a lady thing, apparently. Ask your mum" comment with regards to eggs (again, note the use of "apparently" as well as his expression/tone as he's speaking) indicates that he didn't know until then but was able to at least figure it out and is just trying to keep up his image as being "the smart one".
Did he lie by omission?
Why didn't Rocky just come forward and tell the chickens that he couldn't actually fly when Ginger asks him to teach them? Not only does he not do this, but he withholds the fact that he was actually fired from a cannon, thereby putting himself in a difficult situation when he is forced to fruitlessly teach them how to fly or otherwise be sent back to the circus. Wouldn't it be easier for both him and the chickens if he just told them the truth right away?
It seems fair to say that Rocky did not plan ahead for anything. Far as we can tell, even before his initial escape attempt went awry, he had no larger goal than 'get away from the circus'. If anything, Rocky was probably always going to escape on his own once his wing healed up.
Also, the situation only comes up in degrees. At first, he's just enjoying all the attention he's getting. Then Ginger asks him if it's him on the poster, which he admits - again, clearly enjoying the attention. As soon as Ginger brings up the matter of him teaching them to fly, he tries to leave but is stopped by the circus truck arriving to look for him. Ginger works out he's hiding from them and makes him a deal: he teaches them to fly, they keep him hidden. Rocky has literally no incentive to refuse the deal, since he still doesn't take the plight of the chickens that seriously. To him, Ginger's just some dreamer and the other chickens are all more than happy to fawn over him. It's not until the moment he sees the chickens all depressed that he truly becomes at all invested in what actually happens to then and by then he's in way too deep with the deception to just tell them the truth.
Rocky tries to tell Ginger the truth after the dance scene, but he was interrupted by the delivery truck. After rescuing Ginger from the pie machine, and listening her tell the others that he'll teach them to fly tomorrow, he feels guilty and can't bring himself to reveal the truth. So he left the other half of his poster before leaving. Had he verbally told the hens the truth, then their disappointment would have been more painful than it needed to be.
Why leave Ginger with a pulse?
Given he was clearly aware of how much trouble she was, why didn't Mr. Tweedy just kill Ginger after her first escape attempt?
Because Mrs. Tweedy wants to maximize her profits and Ginger is still capable of laying eggs to sell for the market. The only time they would kill a chicken is if the chicken is no longer producing eggs for an entire week. Note that when Mrs. Tweedy switches from the egg market to the chicken pie market, Mr. Tweedy immediately goes after Ginger first.
Babs and holidays
Even though Babs looks sad before she comments if Edwina is going on holiday, why does she think that that's the case? She's been on the farm long enough to know what happens when a hen is taken away to the barn after roll call (and even later in the film is nervous about it herself!).
This troper is under the opinion that it's straight-up denial and/or a coping mechanism. Perhaps Babs comes up with innocent scenarios to shield herself from the horror of it all, and only drops the act when there's no point in keeping it up.
What about the scene where Ginger's talking about what freedom would mean for the hens, and Babs interprets there being no farmer in the scenario as meaning the farmer might be on holiday? There's also a moment at the end where Babs says that their newfound freedom as being a 'lovely holiday'. It might just be possible that she thinks anyone being away from the farm (or hens being taken out of the chicken coop) equals them going on holiday, although I guess the only exceptions to that scenario would be when she's nervous about not having laid eggs, and when Ginger is taken to the pie machine.
Mrs. Tweedy's obliviousness
So, I understand the general concept that Mr. Tweedy thinks the chickens are intelligent because he's the one guarding them and dealing with their escape attempts, whereas Mrs. Tweedy handles more of the business end of things and thus doesn't get to see the escapes. Fine. But here are some of the things that Mrs. Tweedy is definitely aware of. First, the hens sleep in the exact same huts, in the exact same nests, every single night (how else could the Tweedys accurately keep track of which hens are laying eggs and which aren't). Second, they understand that the alarm means it's roll call time, and they know to go line up in perfectly symmetrical lines and stand at attention. Third, the lines they stand in during roll call are clearly precise in how they correspond to where they sleep in their huts, since Mrs. Tweedy is able to use the egg laying form to single out which chickens aren't laying eggs anymore. Given that Mrs. Tweedy is very aware of those things, how can she not understand that the chickens are at the very least somewhat intelligent?
It's possible that it took a while for the chickens to be trained to do all these things (considering the longer it took for them to learn, the more Mrs. Tweedy would think they were unintelligent). By the time the movie takes place, it might so ingrained that it's usual for the hens, and Mrs. Tweedy just looks at it as being regular behaviour (possibly just out of obedience/fear). One other thing that may factor in; at the time the movie takes place we see that their profits have taken a major drop, which we see Mrs. Tweedy is not happy about. She may well be venting her frustration through those comments.
How does Mr. Tweedy know Ginger's name?
Mr. Tweedy refers to Ginger by name a couple times in the scene right after they eat Edwina for dinner and Mrs. Tweedy is looking at the advertisement for the pie machine. How would he possibly know her name? The chickens either don't talk around the farmers or their speech isn't understood by the farmers, so it's not like Ginger told him her name, and I find it very hard to believe the Tweedys named the chickens.
When used as an adjective, the word "ginger" means a light reddish-yellow or orange-brown color. He's identifying her by the color of her feathers.
Naturally, an egg will only hatch a chick if the mother hen bred with a rooster. Which means that all the chicks we see at the end would be either all Ginger and Rocky's offspring, or the guy would have had to mate with everyone of the chickens. Although it probably plays by the fictional rule that an egg always hatches if it doesn't end up as food.
It probably plays by that other fictional rule of Babies Ever After, implying that they are Ginger's and Rocky's. We are supposed to treat their procreation as the human variety, not the chicken one.
The tie-in book reveals that Bunty has a heck ton of children (seventeen, iirc) and I think Babs' daughter has an entry in the book, meaning those two presumably had children at the end of the movie.
Also, the chick Mac puts in the catapult also shares her signature over-bite, which suggests that could be her child. However, the chick has brown eyes.If you take into account that brown eyes are a dominant trait, Mac has green eyes, and Rocky is the only brown eyed rooster shown in the movie...
I suppose that'd also imply all of the green eyed chicks are Fowler's offspring, given that you'd need two recessive genes to have green eyes. The same can't be said about the brown eyed chicks—some of the hens have brown eyes and it's plausible that the chicks get their eyes from their mother.
Or maybe I'm delving too deeply in the genetics of claymation chickens. Hopefully, the sequel will clear the water at least a little. We'll have to see in 2023.
The plot of the sequel reveals that Ginger and Rocky will have one chick together.
Mrs. Tweedy has every reason to be skeptical when her husband tells her that the chickens are organized. Or, rather, she would, if it weren't for the fact that the chickens are clearly wearing articles of clothing, some of which were probably knitted by Babs. So if the chickens are obviously smart enough to know what clothing is, and smart enough to make it, too, why would it be illogical to conclude they're organized?
Considering what she's like, she probably just isn't keen on admitting that her husband knows something she doesn't, even in the face of evidence.
It's pretty bad financial sense to slaughter ALL of your stock in one big go. However, it may be an In-Universe example as Mrs. Tweedy just wanted to kill them all and not be a chicken farmer any more.
Given her belief that going into the pie-making business would make her rich, she probably figured the pies would be so profitable she'd have money left over to buy more chickens, fatten them up, and toss them into the machine. Lather, rinse repeat. Kind of like how logging companies plant new trees after chopping down old ones.
Something that always bugged This Troper: Why did Mrs. Tweedy marry Mr. Tweedy in the first place? If they actually dated and got to know each other, she must have known he was just a small-time chicken farmer. Unless she charged head on into the relationship without learning anything about him first.
In a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene in the beginning, we see Mrs. Tweedy looking at a profits chart, which started high but has since gone down drastically. Maybe her husband's family was rich once and she married him for his money, only for the farm's business to start going down as the movie starts.
In the scene with the pie machine, we're shown how Rocky escapes the shredder; by grabbing a bar. We are not shown how Ginger did. It's around 1:10
Ginger could have done the same thing, only the bar didn't drop down under her weight as she's lighter than Rocky. Or perhaps the bar automatically went back up after the weight is removed, meaning that it was still in the right position for Rocky to do the same thing. Still a bit of a coincidence that they escaped the shredder the same way, but we do know that Ginger is faster and more agile than most chickens.
It's a bit strange that for a rooster that's as valuable to the circus as Rocky, it took a fair amount of time for the circus owner to come to the farm to see if he was there. However, Rocky crashing into the weathervane cut his flight short, which meant that he never got to his proper 'landing area', where someone from the circus would have probably been waiting for him.
Time and place, based on background details:
The propellers for the chickens' aircraft are made from road signs that indicate they are at least 33 miles from Halifax;
Nick's suit, on closer inspection, appears to be made of Bank of England branded sackcloth. It also bears the insignia G (VI) R - George Regnis - referencing George the Sixth. However, in an earlier scene we can see a stamp with the face of King George's daughter, Elizabeth II, peeking out of Mrs Tweedy's post. This would indicate that the movie takes place after 1952, when George died and was succeeded by Elizabeth.
Further corroborated by the fact that Fowler remembers serving in the RAF during World War 2.
It's very easy to miss, but the clipboard Mrs. Tweedy uses during roll call shows the address of the farm; it's located in North Riding of Yorkshire.
During the scene where Rocky's on the tricycle, he's listening to "The Wanderer" by Dion and the Belmonts. The song was released in 1961. This indicates that the film takes place in the sixties.
If the Tweedys (and Dr. Fry in the sequel) are villains for killing chickens, and Mrs. Tweedy was approved as a Complete Monster (and as Pure Evil in Villains Wiki) for that, does that mean any farmer is a villain despite killing chickens not being morally wrong by human standards?note Vegans will say they are.
