cc >> Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Wisconsin Historical Museum
History Sandwiched In lecture series. Today we're going to hear interesting stories from
backyard chickens and the phenomenal components and stories that they have to share with us.
It's my pleasure to welcome Susan Troller today to help us learn more stories about our chicken friends.
Thank you. Please, a warm welcome for Susan. [APPLAUSE]
Susan Troller: Thank you everyone for coming today. I'm always excited to talk about chickens.
I'm not a chicken expert but I love animals and I've had animals all my life. In fact, writing this book has
been great fun for me partly because I've had a chance to work with my friend and designer Caroline Beckett on the book and
also with the artist Sue Medaris, S.V. Medaris. Her work is fantastic for anybody who has seen it.
She's had shows at Overture. She had an incredible one chick show about chickens that was at the Madison Public Library
a couple of years ago. And so it's been a fun collaboration. But I really started doing the
book because Caroline approached me and said she would like to do something with Sue's art, and I had wanted chickens
for 35 years. Now I have lots of other animals. I have horses.
I have dogs. I have cats. I've raised dairy heifers. I've had steers.
I've had Angora goats. I've rescued raccoons and rabbits. All kinds of things,
but no chickens. My husband said that he didn't want chickens and he had been very generous about every other
animal so that was kind of the line in the sand. No chickens. So when I got the request to
write this book, I said as any reporter knows you have to write about what you know. So I wanted chickens.
And he said, well, if you're writing a book then it's only sensible. So we wound up getting chickens
and I have really, really enjoyed them. There is a phenomenon that's going on around the country.
People are getting chickens in cities, in suburbs. They're not just for breakfast anymore.
They are a pet with a purpose. Sometimes you'll see bumper stickers that say, "My pet makes me breakfast."
[LAUGHTER] So they are finding a place in urban and suburban lives that they have never had before.
Waves of chicken fever come and go throughout history. And seeing as I'm at the Historical Society here I
thought that I would read one very quick little thing from The Field Guide to Chickens by Pam Percy.
And what she says is hen fever swept the nation. We could be talking about now. As described in chicken breeder
George Burnham's The History of the Hen Fever: A Humorous Record, 1855. When Boston held the first
exhibition of fancy poultry in the United States of America in 1849, the American Poultry Industry was truly launched.
So the interest in chickens and raising chickens in unusual ways has sort of come and gone over the generations and
over the decades. But right now we're in a period of chicken fever. So the first thing I'm going to
read from our book, Cluck: From Jungle Fowl to City Chicks, is "Why Chickens?" And then I'll read a couple of
pieces about roosters. I was waiting to see if we had children in the audience. I don't really read the rooster
stories when there are children in the audience. [LAUGHTER] With chickens there's a fair
degree of sex and violence, so it's for an adults-only audience. So that's what we're going to do
after "Why Chickens?" From barnyard to backyard, lowly hens have fluffed up their feathers and flown the country
coop. Newly welcome in cities from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, they become pets with a
purpose supplying eggs for the table, fertilizer for the garden, and laughs, lot of laughs, for their city slicker
friends. In recent years chicken fans have successfully sought zoning changes to allow hen house
keeping in many urban and suburban areas. The result is a boon in backyard poultry.
Quite a journey from jungle fowl to city chicks. Although roosters remain unwelcome in most urban or
semi-urban settings, that's probably a good thing, the newly chic hen is definitely something to crow about
if you've caught chicken fever. The chicken's current role as a quirky urban status symbol is apparent in a variety of ways.
There are innumerable chicken with websites and chat rooms full of newbie fowl aficionados learning how to set up brooder
lights for baby chicks or asking questions about acceptable rooster behavior and egg laying etiquette.
You can go into many chi-chi urban pet stores and find chicken supplies including pricey organic food right next
to the designer dog leashes and hand-crafted cat climbing trees. In neighborhoods that have really gone crazy for chickens,
regularly scheduled hen house tours are popular and allow fowl fanciers an opportunity to take a peek at other people's poultry
palaces and cleverly painted coops. It's kind of like a Parade of Homes for hens and their
friends, and anyone who is involved with the chicken group here in Madison there has been an ordinance on the books for
about the last four years that have allowed people to keep four chickens, no roosters, in town. And they do have chicken coop
tours quite regularly and they are fun. There's also been a surge of city kids showing their chickens
in 4H classes and growing interest in ornamental chicken breeds with spectacular feathers, colors, or unusual
characteristics. From Jersey Giants to the tiniest Bantams, from Frizzles to Silkies.
In addition, a new generation of small acreage back to the land young farmers has stirred growing interest in sturdy
practical heritage chicken breeds our great-grandparents might have known and loved. While industrial scale chicken
farms utilized birds that had been very specifically adapted for fast growth or phenomenal egg production, those who keep
small flocks of chickens at home often favor old fashioned dual purpose chicken breeds good at supplying both eggs and meat.
For keepers of small backyard flocks, disposition matters, too. Anyone keeping chickens
primarily as egg-laying pets will tend to choose a winning personality over a speeding conversion from chick to fried
chicken. Few would argue that keeping a tiny flock of chickens from home-raised eggs is a
money-making proposition for urban or suburban dwellers. Instead, keeping chickens is primarily a labor of love as
well as a very direct way to connect with the food we eat. The current craze for chickens at home coincides with a trend
of wanted to know more about the sources of our food. Recent scares associated with factory scale farming of eggs,
meat, and produce have created greater awareness for the virtues and good taste of providing these things locally.
Like planting and harvesting a garden or buying from a farmer's market, keeping chickens gives us a sense that we have some
control over that most basic of needs providing nourishing food for the table. But keeping chickens isn't just
about being virtuous or nostalgic. It's also surprisingly fun. With their variety of
vocalizations, their fundamentally whimsical behavior, and their interesting interactions with each other and
the natural world, bugs, breezes, anything that looks like food, or a real or imagined enemy, chickens are undeniably
entertaining. And although they've been part of human life and civilization for almost 10,000 years, part of
the charm of chickens is that they remain essentially and relentlessly themselves, little affected by human rules of fair
play, morality, or etiquette. As we raise fragile little chicks, gather eggs, clean the coop, feed and water our flock,
protect our birds from predators, and there are lots of them, and even butcher our chickens, we become both actors
and observers in their chickenish lives. When we keep chickens in any setting, rural or urban, we,
too, become part of the cycles of life, death and everything in between that's always helped dignify the dirt and work,
hardship and uncertainty of farm life. Plus there's that other side of the coin of living with animals,
the funny and the ribald, the brave, the bizarre, the tender, and the beautiful. In a world where much seems
plastic, fantastic and phony, and chicken keeping is the very definition of down to earth. There's a surprising amount
going on, and it's a reminder that we, too, are part of the big wheel of life. That's what this book of art and
essays is all about. So there's an entire chapter in here that is called "Wicked Roosters This Way Come."
And one of the things that I've learned in giving these talks is that not only do chickens have stories, chickens are kind of
individuals and I've got these seven chickens right now and they have very, very individual personalities, some more
interesting than others. The roosters are particularly interesting. Not necessarily in a good way.
But it has been really a fascinating thing to learn that the birds have their stories, but whenever I do a talk, people
have chicken stories too. A surprising number of people have chicken stories, things that happen to them as children
on a farm or I was even doing something at Overture and someone raised her hand and she lives in Madison and on the
shores of Lake Monona and they had a rooster named Albert in their basement for six months. He was the result of a science
experiment at school that their daughter brought home. So there are many, many chicken stories.
And roosters have a bad rap. But they are not all serial rapists or aggressive with tiny farm children.
Some of them are delightful. And in fact, Big Tiny, who was the subject of the biggest painting that Sue Medaris did at
the one chick show at the library which you might have seen. When you walked up the stairs
there was a 12-foot by 20-foot painting of an enormous chicken, a legendary chicken, a beautiful chicken, a good chicken named
Big Tiny. This is his story. Rest his feathered soul, Big Tiny was a lady's man.
Big Tiny, or Big Boy as he may have been known in particularly tender or intimate moments, was an exemplary Buff Orpington.
Like most Orpington roosters, he was a large blonde handsome fellow, imposing and attractive. Surprisingly, for a rooster he
was neither vain nor arrogant when he could have been both. Big Tiny had the confidence of a born leader, and as a result he
never seemed to be in a hurry. He had a calm, capable demeanor in all kinds of company. As other lesser roosters
squabbled, fluffed, and fought, Big Tiny strolled on by, magisterial and measured. Let them sort it out.
I have more important things to do like find some bugs for these fine hens, he seemed to say. Naturally, as Sue tells it, the
girls couldn't get enough of him. When Big Tiny came out of the coop there was always this kind
of a thrill and it just looked like the hens were swooning, you know, she recalled. It was always like, oh, Big
Tiny, here he comes, he's so cool. So Big Tiny was kind of like a chicken rock star, among a
certain set anyway. Clearly he had no intentions of taking his show on the road. But here's the thing: He never
let his superiority go to his head and he didn't take the attention of his little flock for granted either.
Big Tiny was inherently generous and it was perhaps this as much as his sturdy good looks and his cool unflappable demeanor that
recommended him to every hen on the place. According to Sue he had a habit of finding tasty tidbits or
being the first one at breakfast, lunch, or dinner. As he checked out the menu he made little chortling
tuck-tuck-tuck-tuck-tuck murmurs to signal the chow looks good, all is well in our world. So the hens, assured of safety
and something delicious to eat, would come running, and gallant Big Tiny would step back until everyone had eaten her fill.
Clearly this food and safety signal that brings hens running is a useful thing to know if you're a rooster.
Suffice it to say that Big Tiny saw lots of enthusiastic action. But not all roosters are created equal or equally good.
Sue says some roosters make this distinctive food vocalization and when the hungry girls come running it's all too clear these
guys aren't advertising a nice caterpillar or some corn. Forget the food, I've got something else in mind for you,
my pretty, they say. The hens, because they're chickens and not much given to logical thinking, rise to the
bait every single time. Nonetheless, it doesn't make them like or trust a deceitful rooster.
I have a friend who won't let a rooster on her place, Sue continues, she says all they want to do is rape her hens and
cause trouble for everybody else. But she never met Big Tiny. So that's the story of Big Tiny.
And he was a prince among chickens. Now my own experience with roosters has been quite mixed.
Just like Julie is saying she's got the day old chicks at the museum today, we got little tiny fluff ball chicks.
And we bought them from a little boy in the Viroqua area. And we weren't quite sure what the mix was going to be.
We wanted ultimately four or five hens. So we got eight chicks and we thought we'd just kind of figure
out how things would work out from there. We weren't sure which were boys and which were girls.
It turned out that there were ultimately two roosters in that group and six hens. So then it was we had to figure
out what we were going to do with the roosters. And I learned that they were fascinating and interesting, and
my favorite chicken from the very beginning from a little rooster named Buddy. And this is a story called
"Buddy to Bully." We got the chicks in May. May turns to June, June to July. With a small flock of chickens
you are watching closely, the passage of time feels accelerated because they grow so fast.
In just a few weeks our Buff Orpingtons changed from adorable golden balls of downy fluff to gawky, awkward adolescents.
Their legs seemed to grow knobby almost overnight and their feathers turned into a messy looking pastiche of sizes
and shapes that gave them a perpetual bad hair day look. Meanwhile my best chicken friend remained handsome Buddy.
Unlike the other Orpingtons, he never went through an ugly phase as an adolescent. He was always eager to be
caught, racing over and nearly leaping up into my arms if he thought I'd take him for a stroll.
He seemed to love to chat and would look quizzically back at me when I spoke to him. He had the good sense not to try
to fly much, as if he had a built in aversion to looking ridiculous. I couldn't help but smiling
every time I looked at this over sized good looking chicken who I believed loved me best. His comb grew quickly to a rich
scarlet color. His lustrous golden feathers were always beautiful. Had the look of someone who
spent a fortune at the salon. Even his weird chicken legs looked somewhat muscular and tan rather than scaly and scary or
bluish yellow. When the crowing began in July signaling that we did indeed have a rooster, when you have
chickens this is usually the way you know which ones are the roosters because you start hearing little rooster calls.
I knew immediately by its confident tone that it could be no one other than Buddy Orpington.
It was right from the beginning a big bell-like cry. I am, I am, I am, he seemed to shout morning and night.
His bold ca-ca-ca-ca-roo was never timid or tentative, and he didn't seem to need any practice for that proud trumpet call.
But shortly after we began to hear Buddy's self-congratulatory shout-outs we also became aware of another little cry of
er-er-er-a-a-roo. This was no alpha rooster for sure based on his vocalization. But who was he and what was he
trying to say, and how could we deal with not one but two would-be leaders of the flock? The voice was so soft, so almost
apologetic that it was hard to pin down. But I had my suspicions as I began seeing Barrell sometimes
roosting on the same roost as Buddy, and they often seemed to feed together first thing in the morning.
I began thinking of them as the boys and the rest of the flock as the girls. I changed Barrell's name to
Darrell. Late one afternoon the entire group of eight was out foraging in the brushy undergrowth beyond
their coop. All of the sudden there was a flurry of furious noise screeching and squawking so loud
that we dashed up the hill to make sure some predator hadn't decided to grab a chicken dinner during daylight.
By the time we arrived on the scene, whatever had gone seemed over and all the chickens were present and accounted for.
But that evening when it was roosting time, Darrell was a no-show. I found him huddled under some
branches, far from the flock, apparently prepared to sleep separately in the open. He happily took some treats from
me and was willing to follow me back down the hill when I called. But he was very slow and limping
badly, although I couldn't find any visible injury. There was no fuss when he went in to roost among the other
chickens and Buddy paid no attention to him whatsoever. But we didn't hear that gentle little crowing sound again for
months. Soon after, Buddy, who still raced to greet me with all kinds of chat and great enthusiasm for
any treats I might have, began to show a new interest in his fellow flock members. I'd read about rooster courtship
rituals. Apparently Buddy had not. Rather than waste his time luring his would-be girlfriends
with treats or any displays of dancing or wing dragging, he seemed to favor a more direct approach.
It involved standing quietly one moment and then jumping with all his force and ribald enthusiasm on an unsuspecting pullet.
She would shriek and struggle. He would hold on to anything he could get his beak or talons into.
It wasn't long before all the Buff Orpingtons, the targets for Buddy's sexual attention, had become flighty and neurotic.
They were losing feathers. Following a particularly rambunctious activity they might limp or drag a wing.
It was not a pretty sight. It was a brutally hot July day when I finally had to make my final decision about who would
go and who would stay. Buddy made it easy, actually. I came home from work about 4:00PM and the temperature at
the back door registered 96 degrees in the shade. I was worried about the chickens in the heat and hoped they'd be
perched somewhere under the breezy shelter of their fenced run. But no, it was only Buddy
strutting about, airing his wings from time to time and sipping water in the shade. The girls and Darrell
were nowhere to be seen. I found the rest of the flock, minus Buddy, huddled in the blazing hot coop, panting,
several of them with their eyes closed. They were apparently too intimidated to come out and were
obviously prepared to make themselves into roasted chicken rather than brave a confrontation with Buddy the
bully. With two roosters and too many chickens to house through the winter I had known from the
beginning that some birds wouldn't make the final cut. Now it was clear who had to be sent away.
For the health and safety of the rest of the flock, my beautiful friendly show off Buddy, the chicken with a dazzling vertical
take off when he wanted to pluck grapes out of my fingers would be the first to go. Rehoming a rooster, especially
a pet rooster, is not an easy task. They're forbidden in most cities and no one wants a rooster
that's too rough with the hens, no matter what other charms he might offer. I wasn't even sure Buddy would
be friendly with anyone besides me, as he seemed fairly focused in his affection. Ultimately and with a heavy
heart I loaded him up in a large cat carrier and drove him over to my friend Anna's house. She had agreed to keep him until
the fall butchering date for her group of Delaware roosters. And I believe Buddy's destiny as dinner for Anna and her family
was an honorable one. I carried my favorite chicken to his new home, a small coop set up for one big rooster.
Buddy looked about brave and alert. As I set him free in his new quarters he was absolutely true
to form and began crowing that brash cry of his. I am, I am, I am here, he seemed to shout.
Crowing from the other roosters ensued and Buddy strutted around his new digs, apparently scouting this new environment
for any likely looking rape or pillage victims. If good looks alone had been enough, Buddy would have been a
success among the ladies, but apparently among chickens, manners do matter when it comes to getting compliance.
As I petted Buddy goodbye and then drove out the driveway I'm pretty sure he didn't notice at all, but I hoped he wouldn't be
too unhappy in his new enforced life of celibacy. And I wondered if somewhere in his chicken brain he would miss
me. Anna said she would feed him grapes and speak to him kindly. Now there's a sad coda to this
story and it's murder most fowl. It's inevitably dreadful tidings when a email or any other correspondence from a friend has
the word murder in the greeting or subject line. Here's what Anna had to say regarding some dark news.
Today my rooster's murdered Buddy. I feel terrible. Strong winds must have blown the
door to his coop open, and it looks like he was jumped before he even had a chance to run. Even though he was intended for
our freezer, I'm very sad about what happened to him. Vicious chickens. Sorry to share the sad news.
So that's the story of Buddy. And the boon for Buddy was benefit for Darrell who moved into the position of leader of
the flock. And there are other stories about the rest of my birds in the book, but maybe we could
start talking a little bit. I'm sure most of you have chicken stories or someone has a chicken story.
If you'd like, I can read other things and we can kind of open it up for interaction right at this stage of the game.
So do any of you have chickens or have chicken stories? >> Everybody is chicken. >> What?
Everybody is chicken. >> Everybody is chicken. [LAUGHTER] Well, I can read some
stories about the hens also who have interesting personalities if you'd be interested in that or we can do a little...
Oh, sure. >> Why don't you tell us something about the predators. If someone were thinking about
this and they were in the city but edge of country, what do you do? >> Well, it is one of the
responsibilities that you have with chickens is to make certain that you have a very secure kind of coop.
And it's interesting, one of the things that I learned about chickens is that they do come back to roost every night in
their coop. But they're also extremely vulnerable at night because they sleep totally soundly.
So if they're not protected, during the day they are pretty clever resourceful birds and they are alert about predators
coming around and they sound the alarm and they run for cover. But when they are sleeping, they are almost like in a coma and
when people want to catch a chicken, it's an easy thing at night when they're on their roost.
So you do need to make certain that especially the coop where they roost is very secure. And raccoons are particularly
clever at getting into everything. Possums are predators. Dogs.
Dogs will just chase chickens down more for sport than anything else, but there are a lot of predators.
So it is important to make sure that the coop itself is very secure. Yes?
One of the questions I've had is, I don't have chickens but people in my neighborhood do and they have young children.
Yes. >> And I'm wondering how they are able, I've often wondered, what do they do?
Do they butcher these chickens or do they just have to keep them forever because how are they going to break it to the
kids that the chicken was killed for food which sounds very reasonable to an adult. >> Well, I think that there are
a couple of lines of thought about this. Some people will say we have chickens as pets and they are
going to remain pets even when they are not at optimal production. And the commercially raised
chickens last about a year and a half, and that's the end for them. But chickens continue laying
eggs for quite a long time after that but in a much more sporadic way and also the size of the eggs varies a lot.
That's another reason that the commercial chickens, they need to lay on a very regular schedule and they need to lay
a very uniform size of egg. So when you start having chickens that lay more erratically or larger eggs and
smaller eggs, that's when they get rid of them commercially. But for a family, that's not such an important thing.
So they last as laying hens quite a lot longer. And if you've gotten them and you've talked to your kids about
them being pets, we had a rule in our household that was called the we don't eat pets rule. And that worked out well
on our farm. And we raised some steers and we said we have these steers, we feed them for a year, they
are never hungry, they are never frightened, they are never thirsty, they have a good life, and we take good care of them.
They have excellent food. So we take care of them for a year, they take care of us for a year.
And I think that people who have that attitude going into chickens can explain that to kids.
I was very worried that our daughter was going to be so traumatized. She was a darling little three-
or four-year-old and very sensitive and loved animals very dearly. And I thought this is going to
be bad the first night we had short ribs from one of the steers. And she picked up the bone
and said is this his leg? It's very good. [LAUGHTER] So I thought, well, I don't
know, maybe I'm not doing a very good job with her sensitivity training here. [LAUGHTER]
But anyway, I think that it's partly in the way that you approach it with kids but I think that if you have chickens
that are primarily your pets, you do have some responsibility and you tell that to your kids, then you say they lay eggs for
us for a couple years, three years, and then we will care for them for a couple years, three years.
That's the way to think about it. I think everybody has to work that particular equation out
themselves. Yes? >> Have you discovered any chicken veterinarians?
Yes, as a matter of fact. And I will put in a plug for Stephanie at Country View. It's interesting because you buy
birds for $5 a chick or something like that and then they become pets and all of a sudden, continuing chicken care
as a veterinary specialty has not been the sort of thing that a lot of people have gone into. But apparently Stephanie has
found that there are people now who have pet chickens who are bringing them in for various sorts of things or a broken wing
or a broken leg or something like that. So anyway, she has become interested in chickens and has
learned that as a specialty. But it's not a common thing. Most vets who specialize in chickens do large scale
commercial flocks. They treat a flock for illness or they treat commercial birds, not pet chickens.
But with more pet chickens there are likely to be more pet chicken veterinarians. Are there other questions?
What's the expected longevity for chickens? >> Well, they really do have a ton of predators that go after
them. Hawks, owls, possums, raccoons, dogs, cats go after the chicks. It just seems like there are so
many things that go after them. So a lot of them lead pretty exciting lives and don't survive the predation, even in the city.
And I think that might be one of the things that people also, it's not a good part of keeping chickens but it's an interesting
part of keeping chickens because it does put you in touch with the natural world in a very, very direct way.
But I think that a chicken can live to be 8, 10, 12 years old. Most don't. And this whole thing of keeping
chickens as pets is a little bit of a new phenomenon in our generation. Caroline?
I just met someone who has a chicken they moved from California to Hawaii. She got her microchipped.
The bird was in quarantine for several months to make sure she didn't import any diseases they didn't have in Hawaii.
She told me her hen is 10 now. >> So that is a true pet chicken. And they do have different
personalities. There are a couple of my hens that I really think are just smart and funny and absolutely
delightful. They're characters. I took one to a book event, and she was very, very well behaved
I have to say. She was friendly and cheerful and she went home and laid an egg.
[LAUGHTER] I mean, I was a little bit worried. I thought, oh, Zelda I don't
know how this is going to affect your adjustment to being a chicken after being at a book launch party, but she went home
and got right down to business. >> How are they in winter? How do they deal with extreme cold?
In Wisconsin you need to choose a hardy breed. And that's one of the things that, you need to set up your
coop in such a way that you can keep it warm and protect the birds. The birds with big combs are
going to tend to have those freeze. So you're better off with a bird with a small comb.
And the breed that I have the most of is the Buff Orpingtons, and there are Buff Orpingtons up on the roof
of the Children's Museum. I consider them very beautiful birds. They're big golden birds, but
they are very fluffy and they are very well-suited to Wisconsin winters. And there are some others as
well. Julie? >> People are always concerned about the birds in the winter,
but they should really be concerned about them in the summer more because that's when, we're not going to get
air conditioning for the coop anytime soon. So if you want to be concerned about the chickens you should be
more concerned about the summer because there's nothing we can do to help them really. And they don't really have any
good ways of cooling down. We gave our chickens a bath last week or two when it was really, really hot.
They loved that. But otherwise they're fine in the winter. >> And the other thing that I
have found is that my chickens absolutely love cool water in the summer. And they like, chickens really,
you hear all of these things about dirty birds, chickens like clean water. They don't want water that is
dirty or that's filled with junk or dirt at all. They like having clean water and in the summer they love it when
it's clean and when it's cool and they will really drink a lot. And I think that that helps cool
them down a lot too. And I make sure that my birds have shade as well because they do get very, very parched.
Yes? >> How often do birds lay eggs and what's the longevity of a chicken's life?
Well, they vary. The chickens usually lay them, I think they say every 26 to 28 hours.
I have a little black Silkie hen who lays more like every 22 to 23 hours. She is an over achiever
egg producer. But on the other end of the scale, she goes broody which means she tries to sit on eggs
at the drop of a hat. So I'd say over the course of a whole year she doesn't produce that many eggs because she'd
rather be mother than produce a lot of eggs. But when she's producing eggs, boy, they're not very big but
there are a lot of them. So that is the experience that I've had. It's pretty variable.
I have a rescue hen that's a breed called an Americana. They're the ones that lay the gorgeous blue and green eggs.
And she lays less frequently but she's a little bit older and she's also, in her life, survived a possum attack, an owl
attack, and being carried around our yard but our daughter's very large standard poodle. So she's had kind of an exciting
life. So she doesn't lay quite as many eggs as the other chickens but I give her a pass on that.
Yes? >> Are chickens flightless or do their wings have to be clipped? >> Some are better fliers than
others. Whitman, the little black one, and Darrell, the rooster, are breeds that are pretty decent
fliers. In fact, Darrell flew out of the coop and onto our porch one night when something scary
had happened. We came and found a bunch of feathers up in the yard and he was actually at the front door
with one of our dogs who had gone out around 1:30, and at 2:30 there was this big noise and my husband went
downstairs and here was Darrell standing next to the dog, both of them at the front door going there's something
scary out there. [LAUGHTER] And he apparently had no trouble flying quite a distance down
onto the porch. And Whitman actually has flown up to the roof of our house, and we have one of those
old two story farm houses. The other chickens, the Buff Orpingtons, they are terrible fliers.
They're really not, they can't fly any distance at all. Although one of them did jump off the roof of the Children's
Museum. And if you go over there you will meet this... >> She actually, the story
wasn't exactly how it was portrayed in the newspaper. She wasn't trying to escape. She is very smart.
She was just trying to go out and explore. But she got under the fence. She didn't fly over the fence.
She somehow got under the fence, and this is when they were younger so they were smaller, and she actually flapped down
five stories and was completely fine on the sidewalk. Completely fine and I'm sure, I thought to myself that must be
the only time in human history a chicken has flown down five stories. There should be some kind of
study about this. >> I think you should put a plaque on your coop that kind of, she's made aeronautical
history among chickens. >> Did that make the newspaper? >> Yes it did. It did.
But anyway, the Buff Orpingtons are kind of big, ungainly birds and they're not good fliers. So you don't have to clip their
wings. And I don't really have the heart to clip Whitman's wings or Darrell's.
And they're so good about coming back to their coop at night that even if they get out I don't really worry too much
about them. I worry more about during the day if they would get out with predators.
But I think that the flying, maybe having a little bit of loftability is probably a good thing with getting away
if there is a predator. Yes? >> Do the different breeds, and I know there's many, if you have
a huge mix, do they ever not like another breed? >> I don't have that much experience with a real diverse
group of chickens, but I certainly have heard that the old saying birds of a feather tend to flock together, they do
seem to have sort of common interests. It's by breed. And I would say that both
Whitman and Darrell, for example, they are good fliers And they are very alert. They're a little more wound up
seeming birds. The Buff Orpingtons, I always think of them as the Golden Retrievers of chickens.
They're very easy going, kind of mild, friendly birds. And when I was introducing a young pullet that I have to an
adult bird, I took one of my Buff Orpingtons and took her my gentlest Buff Orpington to kind of get her used to this young
chicken because chickens can be very, very cruel with each other. And it's not recommended to mix
groups of adult chickens because you are likely to have a lot of problems. >> So every night around dark
you have to go out and you have to secure that coop from predators? >> Yes.
Yes, that's the last activity for us of the evening. But it isn't a matter of going and catching the birds because
they've gone in to roost. Your chickens coming home to roost, they do that on their own.
But it is something that's important to do as far as making them secure for the night because they're very, very
vulnerable when they're roosting. Yes? >> In domestic birds, I happen
to have cockatiels, you don't want chronic egg laying because they get so depleted. So I'm assuming that there's
special additions of vitamins and minerals to these diets so that they can lay without hurting their health?
You get different kinds of rations at different stages of their lives. There is a chick starter food
and there is layer food, and I am assuming that that's what that is, those things are for. Do you know about that, Julie?
Yes, on the rooftop of the Children's Museum we have chickens as well as homing pigeons, and they just have a
totally different laying style. The chickens lay a clutch of eggs. They want to get like 12 or more
eggs before they sit on them, whereas the homing pigeons, which are probably more like the cockatiels, only lay one or two
eggs and then sit on them for 21 days. So they just have a totally different physiology.
And I think chickens, that's why we've had chickens for 10,000 years is because they lay like that and they have a different
physiology which allows them to do that and they don't get depleted the same way that a cockatiel or a homing pigeon
does.
I was going to say we are at that one o'clock time period. Amazing questions. Again, I selfishly schedule
these programs so I get to learn something, a little bit more each time. Again, we've got a chicken
expert in the audience with all the chickens on the rooftop of the Children's Museum. Julie will be giving out those
visitor passes as well as walking on over with those who are interested in going and visiting and continuing the
chicken discussion. Susan, again, thank you so much for your knowledge and your sharing of stories today.
Well, thank you so much for coming. [APPLAUSE]