Save the chickens! Box your roosters! Eat more eggs!
I have said this before, and I want to reiterate it: our wonderful Key West chickens have reached critical mass and only wise management and a ôflock reduction programö can save them.
Save them from what? From the ire of rooster-hating people who can get no sleep, or whose yards are being dug up by industrious hens and their broods.
Many of the irate call the SPCA Shelter to have the chickens relocated. This is good! The Shelter calls me and we do what we can to find new homes for the insomniac roosters and excavating hens. But we also see evidence that people are using illegal, lethal methods of solving their chicken problems.
I have seen rat poison put out where chickens congregate . . . and where kids or dogs could just as easily get into it! I have removed several long-festering bebee pellets from chickens' bodies. I have, in my yard, a hen permanently crippled by a pellet which shattered her leg, who nonetheless is bravely raising a brood of chicks, hopping on one foot. (Two of the chicks are not even her own— they are orphans who were rescued from a drain on Whalton Lane by Paul Everhart and Pam Montgomery.)
Many Key Westers have shown incredible generosity and caring toward chickens in distress. Our colorful Key West chickens have been spared a lot of suffering by people who care, and who took the time to get them out of harm's way. But I have also heard sleepless people threaten to shoot or "wring the neck" of a nuisance rooster, and the way they said it, I cannot doubt their sincerity!
Sheriff Rick Roth has graciously offered to take some of the relocated fowl at his petting zoo. So far the Sheriff's people have not cried "uncle!" but I have not yet relocated to their Animal Farm all the previously-relocated Key West chickens which currently run free-range from the SPCA Animal Shelter to the Public Works Building.
The relocated fowl have now become non-grata to the folks at the County offices, at Botanical Park, and the Center of Hope playground. I estimate 50 chickens could be repatriated to the petting zoo from North Stock Island alone. And that would still leave plenty of poultry-non-grata at large in Key West.
The Key West roosters need more room to roam. Does anyone have a farm in the lower Keys where chickens would be welcome? If so, please call me at 294-0088.
If there is a Key West rooster you love, please box him in the evening and keep him indoors (a laundry room will do) so he doesn't make your neighbors crazy. And when you find a backyard hen's nest— don't hesitate: save the chickens! Eat more eggs!