Fun Facts About Feral Chickens

never set your alarm clock again

The first time we saw the property we have been renovating for the past year - a place we call Casa dos Galos for reasons that will soon be apparent - was by iPhone video. The iPhone was held by the real estate agent, Mario, who didn’t change out of his nice Italian leather shoes into something more suitable for crunching across broken glass and tile, stepping on foot high weeds and scrambling over fallen sections of stone walls and steps.

He stood in the front courtyard with hundreds of weeds pushing up through the calcadas behind him, camera facing the front of the house as he read aloud the words that appear on the tiles that bracket the front doorway. While we looked at the tiles, the cascading green tail feathers of a couple of roosters passed by the lower part of the camera frame like a Mardi Gras parade.

Uh, are those chickens? the h asked.

Mario laughed. Yes, there are a few chickens around, he said. They. have lived here for a long time. People in the village give them food and water.

There was the distant sound of a rooster crowing, though it was mid afternoon there in Belas.

I thought roosters crowed at the break of day, I said.

Maybe they are excited by my presence, Mario said. I’m pretty sure he knew at that point that roosters crow all the frigging time, but this was information he was not about to share with a prospective buyer, no way.

Shortly after that call we flew back to Portugal and visited the property, and met the chickens in person. It was hard to get a count, but it seemed almost the entire flock came to the wall when I laid some chicken feed on the top. I counted about twenty.

I have a picture, all of them looking considerably slimmer in those days, living on a diet of foraging and the occasional freebies from village ladies, whereas now they are on month twelve of a regular diet of being fed twice a day and getting special mealworm and peanut snacks twice a week to boot. Some of the roosters are so massive they waddle when they walk, and look like generals in their fancy feathered jodhpurs and spurred yellow feet.

Having lived with them now for more than a year I thought I’d share some things I’ve learned about chickens. But I need to add the caveat that this is about feral chickens who have been living here unaccompanied for the better part of four decades. They had five acres of free range territory, and the occasional head of lettuce or bag of rice tossed over the wall. Thus subsidized, and unbound by the conventions of one rooster per chicken coop, the roosters have found a way to proliferate.

Before they went feral, the chickens lived in an animal enclosure that includes a walled courtyard and a coop built on top of a hillside that rises above the pool. Over the decades, brambles overtook the animal enclosure. The chickens relocated themselves to the driveway, where a water leak near the cottage steps provided a vital few sips of water every day.

Over time the flock gradually broke into two flocks. The northern flock roams the Secret Garden which is what I call the half acre of woods that serves as our backyard. There are fifteen roosters in the northern flock; most hang around in the front courtyard by day and roost in the Secret Garden by night. Three bachelor roosters are always on the perimeter of the action. At one point there were eleven hens but they have been reduced to just three due to the predations of a fox. We are raising four orphan hens inside the house - also due to the predations of said fox.

The eastern flock is smaller, twelve in total, but only one hen, and with two roosters clearly bullied and following me about quite pitifully asking for a little extra, ma’am, if you don’t mind.

Every night the northern flock flaps up to the highest branches of the trees that hang their limbs over the walls around the Secret Garden, offering protection from the Portuguese sun during the day and from predators like rats and cats that like to steal baby chicks at night. Thus situated they are able to see up and down the street, across the street and up the hill to Alberto’s place.

There will be the odd crowing here and there but by 7p they are pretty much settled down for the evening.

Roosters are a touchy lot. As far as I can tell they spend all their time crowing louder than the next rooster, trying to stop other roosters from eating, and picking fights with each other just for existing. They are not at all shy, pattering behind me almost underfoot, hoping I might be carrying food, especially the older guys who are chased away from the feeding area by the younger, more powerful roosters. At each chicken feeding I distribute the food among a dozen roof tiles, and the chickens will feed in groups of two, three and four. Even when there is low turnout to a feeding and I have fewer roosters than tiles they still squabble and shriek at each other.

Roosters crow all the time, not just at sunrise. Right away the truth of their crowing became apparent; no matter where we went on the property we could hear crowing in the near distance. Heck, no matter where you are in the village, you can hear them crowing. It’s funny to realize that that sound, so unique and unexpected the first time we heard it, was a kind of harbinger of what we’d be hearing on the daily for the rest of our lives. Emily Dickinson heard a fly buzz when she died, but it’s roosters I’ll be hearing, crowing their goodbyes.

They don’t crow all the time, of course. In general they will be quiet from 7p until about midnight. There may be a crow here and there between midnight and one. If a predator is spotted they will all crow together which is a little like a drawer full of alarm clocks all going off at once. When one galo crows, others that style themselves alpha will respond, which is how we track where roosters are sleeping at night. Most roost in the trees of the Secret Garden by the front gate, but the rooster check-in system confirms there is one in the upper orchard (Jack Tripper) , one above the cottage (Justin Bieberoo), one in the apple orchard (Stanley), one in the chicken coop (Sette), and a whole phalanx of them in the fig tree in the campo (Sean, Leif, Jackson, Graham, Al, Larry).

Roosters can lose their voices, coughing up (or down) a piece of the grit that aids them in their digestion. If it catches in their throat it can prevent them from crowing. Poor Larry Laryngitis tried to crow for days, with no results. He’d really throw his body into it, but it was like he was a mime rooster - beak wide open, no sound. If you stood close to him you could hear the sound of air whistling around the blockage in his throat. It’s like he couldn’t believe it, and so wouldn’t stop trying to crow, which was sad, all the other roosters and hens eating or pecking around and Larry just over and over trying to crow with nothing coming out.

Larry’s laryngitis lasted for about two weeks; the other roosters bullied him terribly, I had to set up a separate food and water station for him. He wandered around in the sunken garden, having a lonely ash bath, clearly unsure who he was without his crow. Then one day we heard a crow coming from him. It was weak and scratchy and foggy sounding, but he kept making it, as if the sound of his voice had become the most beautiful sound in the world to him.

Since moving here I’ve developed a kind of sixth sense for the high pitched sounds little pintainhos make. They sound like a small army of R2D2s, the squeakings and burblings and chirpings and boopings following you from room to room. Occasionally we will lose track of them and search the house, going to each floor and standing still, listening, until their little soundtrack becomes audible. When they are content they make a constant high pitched creaking sound sound like tricycles that need oil.

Chickens are very curious. Subheading: Chickens will enter your house at will and peck your eyeball. For a long time after her rescue Princess Leia would put her fuzzy little head close to our eyes and stare at us. We learned not to look at her too long though, or she’d suddenly peck gently at your eyeball. One day Leia successfully pecked both my right and my left eyeball and I remembered how my dad once told me about a friend of his who went outside and looked up just in time to get hit in the eye with some bird poop. The friend ended up losing the eye, dad said. There was no more to the story - that was the point of it, the guy losing his sight in this gruesome way. Dad and mom went on eating their breakfast and leaving me to contemplate this story more often than I ever expected, now that I live with chickens.

We used to leave the front door open to catch a breeze but before long the entire flock would be on the front porch and steps, the meeker ones watching the more daring ones egging each other on to enter the house. Often one of us will say, what is that thumping sound only to find Alphonse in the pintainho’s nursery, eating up all their ground up baby food as fast as he can. You wouldn’t think something as showy and noisy as a rooster can creep past you so quietly you don’t know they are in the house for hours, but that Alphonse is a nonchalant fellow.

Chickens like to cuddle and will seek out your company to sit on your warm arm or leg, or shoulder, or lacking that sit nearby in a patch of sun or on a down blanket. In the early morning they will forage but by mid morning they are ready for a little rest and want to do it in a group, with each other, me or the h, or one of our guests, or lacking people, Jake will do. We have dozens of pictures of Jake snoozing away, all four hens sleeping on his back or tummy.

My God, I heard the h mutter the other day, scrolling through his phone.

What, I said, thinking it was some kind of US news he was responding to. But no.

Chicken pics, he said, and we both burst out laughing because I knew exactly what he meant, you end up using all your storage space on pictures of chickens standing on Jake, pictures of chickens sitting on the couch, pictures of chickens perched on your arm, pictures of chickens peering up at you with their necks all stretched in curiosity.

Winning the trust of a chicken so that you can pick them up at will feels like #winning. It’s not easy to catch a rooster. In fact, it is one of the final tests for a Army recruit in the Lebanese army, a Lebanese friend and ex-Army man told me. It’s comically difficult. Roosters can pivot in any direction from any direction, and they detect every movement you are making, so even the teeniest micro signal of your intention to grab at them, and they are already eluding you. So when Alphonse let the h pick him up, the h sent me a Signal message so I’d come see for myself. Some of the flock we can pick up but they will scream like they are being murdered and play statues ‘til you put them down again. Except for Alphonse and Potsy, who seem to enjoy being picked up and will allow us to carry them around for awhile.

He is a cool cat, that Alphonse, and the h strongly identifies with him. Alphonse will often eschew going up to the coop to be fed, sauntering into the house while the rest of the roosters squabble. We are hoping to play matchmaker and for Alphonse to end up as guardian of the cooped hens, eventually coupled up with Princess Leia. Today I caught him giving her tail feathers a good pull, so I don’t think it will take too much convincing.

The more gentle you are when you lift the little ones, the more compliant they are about being lifted - it’s like you can hypnotize them with gentleness. Plucking up one of the pintainhos is a lot like like lifting a ping pong ball with long dangly stick feet, they just go limp and warm in your hand. You set them down as gently as a feather drifting back to earth and they wobble for a second before they start chickening around again.

Chickens are punctual. From the beginning, the flock was quick to note when and where the food was coming from. When we first took possession of the property we were staying in an Airbnb down the street; on the way to the property we’d stop at the little supermercado and buy some sunflower seeds and unsalted peanuts. On the third day the flock was lined up at the gate leaning forward craning their necks watching for us coming down the street.

When we kept the bin of chicken food outside in the carport I’d find two dozen flock members standing in a semicircle around it, about an hour before feeding time. Ofren, a hen would be sitting serenely in the middle of the lid, as if to say “I have found paradise”. Sometimes when we leave town friends will feed the flock for us. When neighbor Ana stopped by for lunch, some of the chickens clearly remembered the two weeks last summer she fed them, and followed her; whenever Tiago parks his work truck in the driveway, the eastern flock will gather around as he enters and exits, talking excitedly amongst themselves.

I remain a little offended at their loyalty to the village ladies; once, I banged the cup on the bowl, the sound that always brings them running for feeding time…and no chickens came zooming around the corner, some of them skidding like cartoons. I walked out to the front of the house and found the whole flock at the gate, pecking away at a head of lettuce and some old stale bread someone had thrown over the fence. Whereas normally they follow me in a feathery crowd wherever I go, they barely gave me a glance, acting as if they hadn’t been fed just hours before and didn’t have a reliable lunch on the way, acting like that moldy old bread was saving their lives or something.

OH YOU JUST WAIT, I called down to them, pecking away. JUST WAIT TIL IT’S EARLY MORNING AND RAINING AND COLD AND YOU’RE HUNGRY AND I’M ALL YOU GOT. YOU’LL COME RUNNING!

When I moved the feed bin to the mudroom we’d have various members of the flock come in and stand on top of the bin. Yesterday Potsy stuck his head into the bin while I was scooping out feed; when the bin lid accidentally fell on him it pinned him by the neck and trapped his head inside - where he kept eating. It was both hilarious and horrible, the way his yellow feet kicked to be free while his beak kept tap tapping the side of the bin, eating as fast as he could while being nearly suffocated. Even after a year, they can never quite get over the miracle of freely available food, bless ‘em.