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U.S. Acres was a comic strip created by Jim Davis, creator of Garfield, that ran from 1986 to 1989. Its main cast is a group of farm animals. This particular strip features Orson the pig, Wade the duck, Booker the chick, Sheldon the only partially hatched chick, and Roy the rooster. It's an interesting strip, because it wasn't nearly as popular as Garfield, most newspapers only ran the Sunday strip even though dailies were produced, and it only ran for 3 years, but the PAWS corporation has had its full force of marketing behind it for years after it ended. At launch, it was in over 500 newspapers, which is astounding, but most people only knew about it from all the book collections and children's books that were subsequently published. An animated version was part of the Garfield and Friends TV show in the 90s, after the strip had ended. You can still read it on Garfield.com and on GoComics. It's certainly had a better life outside of newspapers than in.

I remember getting a couple book collections of it when I was a kid. I was too young to read when it was in the newspaper, so I wouldn't have known about it, but I enjoyed what I did get to read. I think it's a more interesting strip than Garfield, though that isn't saying much these days. Jon Arbuckle's family owned a farm, so I always figured these were the animals that lived on it, but I don't know if that's ever been established. I always like a strip with a larger and more diverse cast of characters anyway. I find it kind of a shame that U.S. Acres had to end and Garfield continued.