A Tale of Six Chickens

[Lin W]

Some months back a mama hen with six fuzzy chicks showed up in my fenced yard. They were very cute and I enjoyed watching them learn to be chickens. When they got to the gangly adolescent stage, mom disappeared but the little band of youngsters stayed. They foraged around the house and ate centipedes and the occasional coqui, so I thought it was all good. Then they grew up to be three hens and three roosters. One of the roosters claimed the three hens and the other two roosters constantly circle the perimeter. There are frequent rooster battles but they look so much alike I can’t tell if dominance changes or not. I have two problems with this - one is they are horribly loud, and the other is they are horribly dirty. The roosters are constantly crowing from about 3 a.m. until full dark, and the hens can get pretty noisy when they lay as well. I feed my cats in the carport and the chickens trash the food, scratching and scattering it and pooping everywhere - chicken poops are huge - who knew? The cats give way to the chickens and my big dumb dogs are totally uninterested, plus one of the roosters backed me down the other day, flaring his neck feathers and jumping up and down squawking. I was in shorts and didn’t want to get spurred so turned and went the other way. I’ve squirted them with the hose and I’ve squirted them with vinegar - neither deters them for long. Anyway, I would like go get rid of all six chickens, but I really don’t want to kill them, would prefer to relocate them if at all possible. The logistics of that escape me. I talked to the “Humane” Society and they will loan me a trap but then want the captured chicken(s) brought to them to euthanize - their answer to every problem seems to be kill, kill, kill, and I so do NOT want to deal with them, ever. Anybody got any other suggestions? I’d really like to have my pre-chicken life back now. Mahalo!


use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without