Buried Entertainment makes an elaborate analysis of the financial situation of Tweedy's farm and the reasons for the shift into the poultry business.
Mrs. Tweedy's skepticism about the chickens being organized is further compounded by the fact that she almost never personally works with the chickens herself. Mr. Tweedy is the one who runs all the guard-patrols, while she handles the farm's finances and sleeps at night. She's never seen any of their escape attempts, so she isn't aware of them using any complex tricks or plans. Mr. Tweedy meanwhile has seen all these hi-jinx himself so he's all too aware of it.
It may even be why she doesn't believe him: she just thinks he's losing his mind from hanging around chickens all day and night by himself for too long. She doesn't think too highly of his intelligence to begin with, and his inability to keep (supposedly) dumb flightless birds from escaping their secure pen daily doesn't help his credibility at all.
Rocky and Fowler's polar opposite reactions to having their true natures exposed can actually be pinpointed to their upbringings. Rocky was in the Circus, so when the time came for him to face the truth, he ran away. That kind of "care-free" lifestyle he wanted meant he didn't want to face down the disappointment that came after he built everyone up so much. Fowler by contrast was a military bird. So when his failing came out, despite his building himself up as well, he faced it head on like a good soldier would.
Rocky and Fowler take an immediate dislike to each other, and spend most of the movie with an antagonistic relationship. This makes a lot of sense because they're both roosters, and roosters are known to fight like crazy with each other if forced to coexist (usually to the death in real life).
Mrs. Tweedy wanting to kill all the chickens in her farm with her pie-making machine may seem Stupid Evil, given she would have no chicken left to make more pies, except she could hypothetically buy more chickens thanks to the profits she would make by selling pies.
In the scene where it's discovered Edwina hasn't laid any eggs, Ginger whispers to Bunty, "Why didn't you give her some of yours?" Bunty replies, "I would have, but she didn't tell me. She didn't tell anybody." Since going a week without laying eggs lands a chicken on the chopping block at the Tweedy's farm, which has already been established as a pretty rotten place to be, Edwina effectively committed suicide.
Later, we get treated to a scene inside of the Tweedys' house, where the bones of a roasted chicken sit on the dinner table, picked clean.
Another bit of Fridge Horror less explored is why Edwina doesn't lay any eggs. Clearly, Ed had to have been a layer at one point, otherwise, she wouldn't there on the farm but, with life being so terrible on the Tweedy's farm, maybe she stopped laying eggs entirely due to being stressed.
When Bunty says that she would’ve provided Edwina with eggs had she asked, could that be an implication that in the past there were hens who should’ve been taken to the chop for not laying, but had their lives saved by other hens who donated their eggs to them?
The main page doesn't omit the fact that Tweedy's Farm is a Crapsack World. Real chickens in factory farming have it much, much worse. At least these chickens can go outside.
There's a very good reason why the chickens are shown living on a small island at the end. Had they settled down in a field or in the woods, they would be living under the constant threat of predators instead.
We see on the truck that the pie machine comes from a company called Poultry Products. It’s never really shown in the movie as to whether or not Mrs Tweedy looked at any other products besides the pie machine, but one would assume that an entire company isn’t going to just focus on one particular product. And since poultry covers a range of birds, it’s very likely that a lot of farm birds in the Chicken Run Universe meet their fate by machine.
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 ensured everyone's eggs would give them one. 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.
of the financial situation of Tweedy's farm and the reasons for the shift into the poultry business.
