It's Not Chicken Salad

No plot, but there’s lots of dancing and musical synchronisation in the barnyard in Musical Farmer, a 1932 Mickey Mouse cartoon.

There’s one scene in a chicken coop where hens are laying and clapping in time to that public domain favourite, “Turkey in the Straw.”



Cut to one poor, despondent hen who just can’t do it.



I looked to the left of the background and wondered what frozen snow was doing there. Then I realised what it really was. (I grew up adjacent to, but not on, a farm).

There are a few things I like in this cartoon, mainly because Walt isn’t obsessed with the Illusion of Life™. Check out these spaghetti-limbed sheep you’d never find in Fantasia.



After the hen finally lays a huge egg and alerts the other animals, a cow sticks its oversized head out of birdhouse.



And Mickey’s camera stand becomes human-esque and starts chasing Pluto.



The cartoon ends Mickey using too much powder with his old-timey camera and blowing the feathers off all the hens when it explodes.

We never find out about the egg. If this had been a Tex Avery or Frank Tashlin cartoon, the egg would have cracked open with a “THE END” sign popping out. Instead we get Mickey smiling as the iris closes.