Conjuring Chickens and Cutting Horses

One of my guilty secrets is that I love chickens. Not eating them, but the living creatures in all their feathered glory. There are about a zillion varieties of chickens to love. Chickens with pantaloons, chickens with hats and multi-colored ones. I’m sure they all have fancy breed names, but you get my point.

For a moment chickens were trendy. The New York Times ran architecture pieces about snazzy coops and Gwyneth Paltrow extolled their virtues. That time has passed.

                

           But while hipsters have moved on from poultry to goat herding, I’ve remained loyal.  (Who knows what will be the next chic livestock? I’m predicting miniature cows. They are perfect; cute and so unhealthy that they die just as their owners become bored with them.)

Part of my fascination with chickens is that I can’t have any.  Brittanies are bird dogs, and over the years I’ve had eight of them.  Brittanies that is. 

Not all Brittanies are birdie, a pheasant could have landed on Morgan and she wouldn’t have noticed, but Poppy is a hunter. Among the critters she has proudly presented to me are moles, voles, squirrels, rats, a couple of crows and dozens of mice. A chicken wouldn’t stand a chance.

Even if I cooped the birds instead of letting them roam, Poppy would make their lives miserable. She’d sit by their house in a hunting point, just waiting for her opportunity to give them a quick shake and break their necks. Poppy is a very efficient huntress.

One day, while surfing the web instead of writing, I discovered mecca for all poultry lovers: The Murray McMurray Hatchery.  They raise fowl of all types -you want a white Peacock? They got ‘em. Blue Guinea Hen? No problem. An assortment of ducks? One click and it’s on the way.  They ship all over the country.  

Since I’m a good sister, and my brother and sister-in-law have chickens and elaborate set up of electric fencing to keep their dogs at bay, I arranged to have an assortment of chickens sent as a belated birthday present. Unknown to me, McMurray ships by US mail and the chicks went out over a holiday weekend. Needless to say, by the time they reached Andy, it was a gift he’ll never forget.  

Oops.

I did have chickens once. My childhood barn was overrun with Banties. They were cute, and during the winter most birds picked out a horse to sleep on. It was endearing and kept the chickens toasty, but it was it kind of gross to clean when it was time to ride.

For reasons no one seems to remember, we took two chicks homes The second night of having chickens in the city, my father got a phone call from the police. Apparently a  neighbor had complained about our livestock.  Since we had a testy relationship with one of the crustier geezers on the block, this was possible.

The call went on and on, and my dad became more and more furious. They were chicks he kept insisting. The size of hamsters. The cop didn’t budge. Until he did. Tthe “policeman” finally admitted he was punking Dad. Dad had been set up by a former friend. It’s now a part of family lore, but at the time we were concerned for Dad’s health.

Not long after, our experiment with poultry was over and the chickens went back to the barn. Just as no one can remember why we got them, why they left is an equal mystery.

That was my last close encounter with a chicken. Occasionally I’ll moan about it, as was the case recently.  Two friends and I were in the backyard watching the horses and chatting. Jasper the Dane and Kathy’s German Shepard puppy, Damali, were playing while we consumed a fair amount of adult beverages.

                

             “What this place needs is some chickens,” said Maureen.

                

              “I can’t have chickens, I have Poppy,” I said.

                

               “You could try having chickens! They’re so cute. And eggs!” she insisted.

                

                Then, just like Beetlejuice, it appeared in the dusk: a dark red rooster.

                

                I thought I was seeing things. And then a hen showed up.

                

                The horses noticed too and t

hey didn’t like it. While the three humans watched with our mouths hanging open, Dezi, the 26-year old retired jumper started to herd the rooster. Lucy and even 29-year-old Murphy joined in, galloping around the pasture, albeit slowly, after the squawking bird. With the precision of champion cutting horses on a cow, my three retirees moved that rooster around the paddock.

 The hen took a different tack and made a beeline out of the field.

                

             It finally occurred to me that my neighbor had chickens, but not a rooster. Perhaps she’d added to her flock. I went inside to call.

                

               By that time, the hen had caught the attention of the dogs. Kathy leashed Damali at the first sight of the chicken. It never occurred to me to catch Jasper. He’s a Great Dane, not exactly a breed known for their birdiness.

                

                But somewhere in the depths of Jasper’s ancestry was a Dane raised to hunt boar.  Apparently when Jasper spied that hen, his four-month-old brain decided that the hen was a small fluffy pig. By the time Maureen pulled him off the screaming bird he had plucked her chest clean and was going in for the kill.

                

               Much to his dismay, Jasper was quickly dispatched into the house, and I returned with my neighbor. She had bought the birds that very day and was pissed that they were loose. Even buzzed we were slightly smarter than chickens, so we quickly cornered and caught the terrified birds and she took them home.

                

                 I still really want a chicken, but I think if Maureen can conjure things just by saying their names three times, it should be something more interesting than a rooster.

I saw a really cute photo of a wombat the other day...

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.