Wild chickens in suburbia

Although we lived on a farm for the first eight years of my life, I was introduced to chickens after we moved into town.  Our city block was home to a seemingly wild band of roving poultry that roosted in the trees, nested in brushy thickets, and scrounged for their food.  I asked my mother what she remembered about our wild chickens and her tale gives some insight into how chickens live in the wild.

So far, the easiest to find photo of "our" wild chicks is one taken in '97 of Maggie [Anna's sister] with a flock of little chicks, feeding them out of her hands on the front porch. But we arrived 10 years earlier, in '87, and I could swear those chicks were there when we got there! I wonder if you remember how they would rush across the street, usually from some big trees on our side across and down to the big maple and hemlocks, where they also got fed, by the old lady who lived alone in a house that has now been torn down.

At that time, Reggie M. [a neighbor] lived near us, before his house burned, probably in '89 or so. Around that time, at least by '90, Errol [Anna's father] had set out rhubarb and asparagus over at the edge of the side yard property where Reggie's house used to be.  And this is where the wild chickens would scratch around, where they had nests, and even where the chicks hatched!

What kind were they? I think they were connected to the game fowl that ran wild in a cemetery a few miles away. While we still had the side yard, they were pretty balanced, that is, about as many hens as roosters. Yes, the roosters did crow every morning! And, yes, there were at least three different flocks of little chicks rushing around, with one batch in our backyard sometimes having a problem of falling in the pond out back! Somehow there were fewer cars on the street then, and the young guys who sped by usually tried to slow down, especially if they were going down to visit Reggie, who also fed the chickens scraps of his breakfasts.

Do you remember a pelting rain--or even hail--one June, that drove one flock to shelter under a rhubarb plant? I hope you remember eating their eggs! I think you also remember the stray dog we saved, who had survived on eggs and beer from tossed beer cans.

I know you remember when you brought a frozen rooster and hen that had dropped out of one of the trees, up here to a box in the Playhouse, with a hot-water bottle and a heating lamp to revive them! And these two were about the only survivors of that killing late-spring storm, probably in '97. Or so we thought. The little chicks Maggie is feeding on the porch had some scrawny rooster uncles, and by the next year the balance between hens and roosters was all off. Suddenly there seemed to be only one or two hens, and too many roosters by far--and drivers now tried to even the balance. In fact, with all the roosters, the mating, and the crowing, Jackson [another neighbor] stepped in.

By that time the sheltering rhubarb and asparagus had been forcibly relocated to the back yard, where George also was tied. Now the big old honeysuckle bush I've still kept was the roosting spot for the strongest roosters, and there seemed to be no little chicks able to hatch.

I knew they were in trouble, but thought Nature would take its course, even though I realized, with the end of "our" side yard our whole neighborhood was becoming more suburban, more gentrified.

There were just too many crowing roosters for Jackson, who hired a man and his son to catch them and take them away. At first I tried to protest, for after all, they were coming in my yard to get them! But the fact was, I had never really adopted them to care for them. So when I had to be away, with George, too, they all were caught except two. Even these last two finally were caught, at dusk one day, but not before the wildest rooster had flown to crow his last from the top of our house! But he had to roost somewhere, and it was back to the bush, and caught in the dark, for him.

This week I'll be sharing other stories of chicken flocks I have known.  If you've got a chicken story you'd like to share, be sure to comment!  Otherwise, check out our homemade chicken waterer, great in coops and tractors.