Crowing about chickens

Chickens are birds.

You might have to think about that for a moment. We tend to think of chickens as dinner. But chickens were and are wild birds, just like robins or grouse.

The father of all chickens is the wild red junglefowl of India, Southeast Asia and Indonesia. Junglefowl look like chickens, but are much prettier. Older, too, with a fossil history of 50 million years.

Junglefowl court, mate, lay and incubate eggs, and raise chicks. They do this once a year, as birds do. The chicken we're most familiar with, the factory chicken that laid the eggs you may have in the fridge, produces almost one egg per day.

A website I found lists 64 breeds of chicken, all developed by selective breeding favoring certain physical characteristics. That's why we have uniform broilers and egg-a-day birds.

Back-yard chickens are fashionable right now, an urban agrarian fad, although city ordinances play a limiting role. In Minneapolis you can keep in your yard as many chickens as 80 percent of your neighbors will accept. Plymouth, on the other hand, is vegetarian when it comes to live chickens.

I thought (momentarily) about chickens as a hobby when I received and read a review copy of "Chick Days: Raising Chickens From Hatchlings to Laying Hens." Author Jenna Woginrich says that caring for a small flock of chickens is easier than caring for your cat.

Really?

No, says Mary Britton Clouse of Minneapolis, who runs Chicken Run, a care and adoption agency for chickens (www.brittonclouse.com/chickenrunrescue). She believes these birds both need and deserve care that incorporates their bird qualities.

Your back-yard chicken is not wild, but it could be. Given a chance, wildness will peek through, Britton Clouse says. "I've seen factory chickens taken to a sanctuary go to roost in trees within hours of arrival." Instincts are there.

She's been caring for homeless and abused chickens for 10 years. She started with birds rescued from a cock-fighting operation. They were to be euthanized, but she found homes for them. She's been doing that ever since.

The number of abandoned chickens has been rising. Britton Clouse took in about 40 birds annually until last year, when the number flew to about 500.

She looks for adopters who will consider their chicken a companion animal, sort of a dog with feathers. "Eggs are OK," she said, "but I want people to appreciate the birds for their wonderfulness as creatures."

Britton Clouse teaches classes about chickens, ignoring ideas for cooking with eggs, and cute coops, focusing instead on "understanding and appreciating avian intelligence and personality."

She's certain that would-be chicken owners often don't know much about the birds.

"You get chickens, and after a while the glamour wears off," she said. "Reality sets in. Properly cared for, chickens are a helluva lot of work."

Hold one, though, Britton Clouse said, and you'll be surprised and perhaps smitten. "They're soft, with feathers like satin. They like to be held. They'll sit on your lap," she said.

Which, I guess, makes them somewhat like a cat.

Lifelong birder Jim Williams can be reached at woodduck38@gmail.com. Join his conversation about birds at www.startribune.com/wingnut.