Lots of people have farms, in what way is Old MacDonald so special that he gets a song about his farm?

We didn't know the answer to this but we weren't going to have a cow about it. So we set off with a moo moo here and a moo moo there to find out the faqs.

First we tracked down the origins of the song and found that it dates back to an opera in 1719-1720 called Kingdom of the Birds:

In the Fields in Frost and Snows,
Watching late and early;
There I keep my Father's Cows,
There I Milk 'em Yearly:
Booing here, Booing there,
Here a Boo, there a Boo, every where a Boo,
We defy all Care and Strife,
In a Charming Country-Life.

It wasn't until 1917 in a collection called Tommy's Tunes, however, that the version we know and love became known:

Old MacDonald had a farm, EE-I-EE-I-O.
And on that farm he had a cow, EE-I-EE-I-O.
With a moo moo here and a moo moo there
Here a moo, there a moo, everywhere a moo moo
Old MacDonald had a farm, EE-I-EE-I-O.

As to why Old MacDonald was special? Well we did discover the following...Prepare yourself, it's not pretty.

One is that it was the cover name chosen by Skynet as part of a sinister plot to introduce an insidious corporate marketing strategy. The mission? To make McDonalds cheeseburgers irresistible so that John Connor would get too fat to fight the machines in the future.

They sent a T-888 Terminator back in time to set itself up as a farmer originally from the Isle of Skye, Scotland to introduce the nursery song. It's so obvious, we don't understand why no one else sees it.

[Team FAQer: Apologies, the faqer who wrote this has now been forced to take early retirement - no! not that kind. We mean a rest].

Another more likely theory is that Old MacDonald was deemed special because of the following.

A life-long city man, tired of the rat race, decided he was going to give up the city life, move to the country, and become a chicken farmer.

He bought a nice, used chicken farm and moved in. As it turned out, his next door neighbour was also a chicken farmer. The neighbour came for a visit one day and said, "Chicken farming isn’t easy. Tell you what. To help you get started, I’ll give you 100 chickens."

The new chicken farmer was thrilled. Two weeks later the neighbour dropped by to see how things were going. The new farmer said, "Not too well. All 100 chickens died." The neighbour said, "Oh, I can’t believe that. I’ve never had any trouble with my chickens. I’ll give you 100 more."

Another two weeks went by and the neighbour stopped by again. The new farmer said, "You’re not going to believe this, but the second 100 chickens died too." Astounded, the neighbour asked, "What went wrong?"

The new farmer said, "Well, I’m not sure whether I’m planting them too deep or too close together."