Crying Fowl: Ground Zero for Urban Chickens

I used to live, in what the LA Weekly recently dubbed as the most up-and-coming neighborhood in Los Angeles. The overwhelming night sounds were patrol cars and what my less charitable friends call ghetto birds- police helicopters. If the noise didn’t shake you out of bed, the lights beamed in the backyard from the air might. The occasional shout, “Get back in the house” that came from above definitely put a damper on the evenings.

Now that I live in a place that the LA Weekly doesn’t even acknowledge as a part of the city, the nights are considerably more bucolic.  In fact, what I hear most are the neighbors’ dogs and a cacophony of insomniac roosters. It’s lovely.

I didn’t realize when I moved here that my neighborhood was ground zero for urban fowl. My next-door neighbor keeps her hens and rooster in a shed that backs against my barn. When I feed my horses in the morning the sound wakes up her elderly chickens none of whom are too pleased about it. The people across the street have a flock of pet turkeys. If you’ve ever heard a turkey, it doesn’t so much go ‘gobble gobble’ as ‘glurck glurck.’ I never knew that before.

My heart though, belongs to the flock of feral chickens that gather up the street. There are four of them, two hens and two roosters, though the numbers fluctuate a bit. Occasionally there are more roosters, since people apparently ditch them because they are noisy. The flock visits me daily, waddling down the street until they hit my patch of grass, which must be full of bugs and other chicken delicacies. They hang out chortling and stuffing themselves until one of my dogs wakes up and starts barking at them. Then the birds hop around in a huff and bustle their way back up the street.

I would have chickens of my own—purely as pets, I’m a vegetarian—but I have Poppy the Brittany. Brittanys are bird dogs by nature. Their job is to flush and retrieve. Because the closest thing to hunting that I do is choose between brands of tofu dogs at the market, Poppy has to make her own fun. Which she does. She’s a hunter of great magnificence. Thankfully she rids my house of rodents regularly, but when there are no mice inside, she turns to the yard. She has caught and brought me squirrels, crows, pigeons and birds of undetermined breed. Thankfully she’s never brought me a chicken.

I really like chickens and I always ogle the baby chicks for sale at my local feed store. But the reality is that as long as I have Poppy, or any Brittany (I’ve had seven so far) I can’t have my own chickens. So I’m forced to live vicariously through my brother.

He lives on a small farm in Connecticut, and he and Nancy have a lot of birds running around the barnyard. For a while they were losing some regularly to a resident hawk and neighboring coyotes. So as a good sister, I thought I’d give them a present. What could be better than poultry?

I turned to the McMurray Hatchery, a huge poultry supply company based in the Midwest. They have literally dozens of breeds of chickens as well as pheasants, ducks, grouse and just about anything with feathers. After a pleasant hour or two perusing the website, I settled on ‘fancy Top Hat’ chickens. These are the ones that have feathers on their heads that look like Minnie Pearl’s hat. They also have feathers on their feet. What I’m saying is that they are ridiculous looking.  Just perfect for semi-urban farmers like my brother and sister-in-law. The great part is that they are apparently prolific egg producers. It was a win – win.

I ordered the chicks on a Friday to be shipped on the following Monday. When I hadn’t heard from Andy by Tuesday I was panicking a little. Wednesday was a Federal holiday, so I planned to call the hatchery on Thursday. Instead Thursday morning brought a call from Andy. “Why did you mail me a box of dead chicks?” he asked. Apparently McMurray mails its chickens and had neglected to factor in the holiday. By the time Andy heard from the post office the day-old chickens weren’t anymore. It was a chick holocaust.  Four chickens out of 26 survived.

This must happen a lot, because McMurray couldn’t have been more pleasant about the situation. They sent replacements. Most of those lived.

Chickens in general aren’t brainiacs but Top Hats populate the short bus. They lay a lot of eggs, but forget to sit on them and are always rushing into the waiting jaws of death. After several years only half a dozen remain. But they are really pretty.

Maybe it isn’t such a bad thing that Poppy keeps the house poultry-free. I don’t mind being the chicken hold-out in the neighborhood as long as I get my fowl visitors.