We are the proud owners of four beautiful chickens at the moment, and besides providing delicious eggs (sometimes) and endless manure for our garden, we have found raising village chickens to be a source of constant entertainment. With no fences and a food free-for-all with most of the chickens roaming from compound to compound eating bugs and bits of whatever food scraps they can find, these creatures develop their own culture and even form family groups. My friend Kelly calls it “chicken TV” in the morning, as they are very fun to watch as we are eating our breakfast from our outdoor kitchen. I’ll just fast forward the episode where Scott literally runs over one crossing the road while on his bicycle going full speed and curses it waddling unharmed into the bush while his knee and elbow are gushing blood. I wanted to give you a glimpse of our current and former cast of characters roaming around our hut. We decided to name them in alphabetical order:
Alpha- We bought this rooster from John and Kelly and named him aptly for his alpha male qualities in their village after Scott carried him on the back of his bicycle for 30km to our home. Unfortunately for our Alpha there was another rooster at our neighbor’s house that was the Super-Alpha and daily episodes went like this: Alpha chases Super-Alpha east, Super-Alpha chases Alpha west, Alpha chases Super Alpha east, Super-Alpha and Alpha get into a huge cock fight and end up at the neighbor’s compound. The neighbor children carry Alpha back to our house by the wings and state that he is a bad chicken and causing problems. The daily episodes turned into every few hours when Scott and I decided that Alpha wasn’t going to last much longer and even completed eating him before he became absolutely stressed out or worse by Super-Alpha. I guess someone else was thinking the same thing because that very same night he just didn’t come back. After searching countless trees and talking to all of our neighbors thinking he shifted to a different territory, we gave up. Well hopefully some poor African bellies were satisfied. Super-Alpha was ecstatic because he could have his pick of our hens.
Beta Jones- This rooster came from a faraway village in our catchment area and became immediate friends with our other hen Cleopatra soon after Alpha’s mishap. They started sleeping right next to each other in the chicken house at night and roamed around together catching termites during the day. In fact they became such good friends that when they both started laying eggs around the same time they decided to share a nest. We discovered five eggs under both of them and couldn’t decide whose was whose, but it didn’t matter much because neither would budge from the nest except for the one hour per day when they both went to forage for food together. One day two of the eggs hatched, and they dutifully shared motherhood duties by rotating which chick went with each mother but both getting equal time with their mutually raised children. This joint-custody agreement worked well until one of the chicks mysteriously died in the chicken house one night and Cleopatra assumed full motherhood duties for Ernie. Chickless and devastated, Beta Jones started laying again, only to discover that her nest was being usurped by the mutant dwarf hen from next door. She did NOT have the same intimate relationship with this new hen and proceeded to push the mutant eggs as well as her own eggs over the four foot ledge from the nest to the ground. Just as we thought Beta Jones would never enjoy full on motherhood, we were surprised to see her happily sitting on seven eggs when we got back from our little excursion from Livingstone. We’ll see how she does with single parenting . . . any suggestions on chick names F-L please send them our way.
Cleopatra- Named for her beautiful coloring, Cleo took on role as the alpha hen as soon as her buddy Alpha met his fate. Daily episodes include Cleo pecking at the other hens trying to get in the way of her eating her food first, as well as sneaking over, under, and in between the garden fence to get what she thinks is her entitlement of grubs and our chili peppers and swiss chard . . . all with spoiled little Ernie following closely behind. Scott and I became so fed up with this nonsense, we had some of the villagers pluck her feathers so she couldn’t fly into the garden anymore. Even after the feather pulling, she still made continual holes in the garden thatch to get to what she thought was her entitled space. The day I suggested we should eat Cleo because we were losing much of our garden to her antics, Scott pulled away some thatch in the fence to repair one of her holes only to discover a stockpile of 11 eggs! Needless to say we had a wonderful omelet that night to make amends for all the days we spent chasing her out. We even made her a special little brick house so she could access her egg-laying spot from the outside, thus avoiding unnecessary trips to the garden.
Deliliah- A special episode of Chicken TV came the evening that Deliliah was brought to our house as a swrawny black runt with her legs tied up. My counterpart Hildah gave her to us as a gift, and was probably thinking we would eat her that very same night like many Lundas do when they receive a random chicken gift during dry season (i.e. hunger season). As Hildah and I busied ourselves making soya milk over the brazier, poor Delilah sat with legs tied in the corner ready to be eaten for dinner. I had different plans and asked Hildah if I could use her for egg laying rather than eating and she agreed since we were already making soya treats. We didn't want her to run away, so kept her legs tied up until we had time to bring her to the chicken house, although she managed to inch her way out of the outdoor kitchen using only her wings. Super-Alpha came by, and saw the new female on the block and started doing his rooster dance. As he came closer though, he saw the legs tied up and realized that Deliliah couldn't perform her bait and catch part of the mating ritual so ran around looking for other hens. We untied Deliah that day and she did eventually perform her rite of passage into the harem of hens and is now happily laying eggs for eating.
Ernie- The spoiled only child of Cleopatra, we are still waiting to see if Ernie is a rooster or a hen as it is already as big as its mom, but still makes little chick sounds. Although the villagers say it will grow a chin thing and start cock-a-doodle-doing, we aren't so sure.
Mutant Dwarf and Turkey Chicken- both have serious genetic impairments as reflected by their names. They don't get included in our alphabetical names because they aren't really our chickens, although do a darn good job of eating our chickens' food, drinking their water, going into the chicken house, laying eggs on our chickens' nests and pretty much raising a ruckus. If we had any idea who the rightful owners were we would try to return them, but it wouldn't do any good since no one has a fence around here.
Stay tuned for more advances in the world of comedy and tragedy . . . chicken TV!
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