By Kim Hayes, Owner
In 1988, Neil Rettig and I (Kim Hayes) moved to Prairie du Chien, WI. after purchasing a very picturesque, but defunct farm. Among the somewhat rundown outbuildings was a chicken coop. We decided we would get a bunch of laying hens and have fresh eggs.
We looked in a Murray McMurray Hatchery catalog and picked out 50 assorted hens to be shipped to us. They arrived as day-old chicks and we proceeded to raise them by the book. When the hens were about two weeks-old we noticed that six or seven of them had dowagers humps and were bent & twisted. Some even walked sideways.
We questioned our "by the book" methods wondering what we might be doing wrong to have caused this physical aberration. After a thorough orthopedic exam, we decided nothing was broken and we declared them "healthy, but twisted."
The hens proceeded to live normal lives, clustering together, seeming to know that they were special---someday to be famous. As a group they roamed freely through the yard--eating, sunning themselves and dust bathing. They wandered in and out of the hen house like normal chickens. One day while referring to the hens, Neil called them "The Twisted Chickens." The name stuck. Eventually they all passed on to roam the "Big Free-Range Farm in the Sky" leaving us with only our fond memories. They all lived the normal five to six years.
Years later when it came time to pick a name for the restaurant, we recalled our "Twisted Chickens." We decided it was a fun name that folks would remember.
So, that's how we got our name!