As part of our ongoing blog series Hi My Name Is, we bring you Tim Arits. Tim came to our attention after the HMNIM "wendy" chicken shirt. Tim is, besides being an entrepreneur, Google employee and drummer, a bit of a chicken expert, well, at least compared to us. He brought to our attention one of the rarest breeds, and one of the most bad ass looking chickens, which we know that statement is an oxymoron. Chicken? Bad ass? How can that be? Well, we will let Tim tell you all about himself and the chicken breed called Ayam Cemani.

I grew up in a very small village called 'Swartbroek', which is located in the South of the Netherlands. Although I grew up on a farm, we didn't cultivate any land or keep livestock for a living. When I turned 9, my grandfather gave me a hen with little chicks that hatched a week earlier. This is when I got my first chickens. Together with my dad, I started to search on the internet for more chickens and we found a chicken breeder nearby. This guy I met basically changed my entire life. He showed me what it is to have a clear passion for something. The way he looked at things still inspires me everyday.

I don't like the normal and I try to make a difference into the things I do. So after a while I decided to start searching for the rarest chicken breed that I could find. After spending hours on the Internet I found the Ayam Cemani breed. One of the coolest and rarest breeds I have ever seen! Because the Ayam Cemani breed is almost extinct, it took me years to find eggs from a pure breed couple. After I hatched the first eggs I started to breed more of them and I even won several prizes in the end. At that time, I already dedicated a large part of my time to save them from extinction and it turned out to be my first project which was driven by pure passion. 

Eventually, in 2012 I had to sell all the chickens because I accepted a job at Google as an account strategist. I had to move from the Netherlands to Ireland and sold the chickens to a Belgium guy who shipped them to America. The chickens I personally raised by hand are now sold in the US for $4,999 a pair (see: http://greenfirefarms.com/store/category/chickens/ayam-cemani/)!!! At Google, I now support small and medium businesses in their online presence and help them to further grow their business. Although breeding black chickens is completely different from helping companies with their online marketing, Google and its advertisers remind me of this incredible breed. It's the passion to reach a certain goal that remains the same!!!