SHELBURNE FALLS, Mass. — Pigs can’t fly. Dogs don’t have wings. But chickens can sled.

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An 11-year-old Massachusetts boy, saddened because his friends could not go sledding with him, decided to take the family’s pet chicken instead, the Greenfield Recorder reported. Luke Read, of Shelburne Hills, put Teddy Nugget, a Barred Plymouth Rock hen, on a disc and sent her sledding downhill, the newspaper reported.

Luke’s father, Clint Read, shot a video of the chicken and sent it to Lindsay Marqusee, a co-worker at Prospect Meadow Farm in Hatfield, according to the Recorder. The Read family got Teddy Nugget and three other chickens from the farm, the newspaper reported. Teddy seemed uncertain while sledding but appeared to be unhurt.

Marqusee posted the video on her Twitter account on Feb. 18 and it immediately went viral, WWLP reported. The clip has had more than 220,000 views on the social media platform, the television station reported.

“I wasn’t expecting it to take off the way it did,” Marqusee told the Recorder. “I said, ‘OK, this is adorable. I think I should post it to Twitter.’”

Luke said he has become close to Teddy Nugget since the family took in the rescue chicken in May.

“Chickens are more than chickens,” Luke told the Recorder. “I’ve discovered that me and her have become friends and we like to hang out with each other. She’ll hop on me and kind of stay on me.”

Teddy Nugget is not the only chicken on the slopes. In Tennessee, Owen Evitt and his sister, Blair Evitt, have taken their pet chicken, Donut, for some sledding adventures.

“She’ll sit down on the sled, and we hold her,” Owen Evitt told WSMV.

Back in Massachusetts, Teddy Nugget sleds solo.

Luke’s mother, Angelina Read, said her family adopted a few chickens several years ago in Halifax, Vermont, finding the abandoned birds outside the school where she works as a kindergarten teacher, the Recorder reported. When one of the chickens died, Luke was heartbroken, and his parents promised the boy could adopt some new ones.

“Teddy, from the get-go, was very different. The other chickens were always together and Teddy was always by herself,” Angelina Read told the newspaper.

Luke soon learned the hen was calmed by being placed in a doggie playpen.

“Their bond grew from there, to the point where she is very much like a dog and she will follow him around,” Angelina Read told the Recorder.

Angelina Read added that the hen sits on her son’s head and perches on his arm like a falcon.

Luke said his experience with the chickens has sharpened his goals for the future.

“I’m kind of hoping to open a chicken rescue, so I can rescue chickens and try to find better homes for them,” he told WWLP.

Clint Read said his family will be picking up their fourth rescue chicken, named Chickadee, on Sunday, the television station reported.

Luke, meanwhile, hopes to start a GoFundMe page to raise the scratch needed to get his chicken rescue project off the ground, according to the Recorder.

Cox Media Group