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Why the chicken crossed the road
Stevenson's Country, July 29, 2003
By Philippa Stevenson
I may have the answer to one of the most vexing questions of all time - why the chicken crossed the road.
As we know this is no paltry poultry concern. This is one of the biggies. Up there with the fate of odd socks and whether O J Simpson really did it.
My theory (please insert own drum roll here) is that the chicken crossed the road to reach the lay-by on the other side.
What else explains the number of chickens that have taken up residence and thrived in roadside rest stops countrywide?
I am not alone in observing this feathered phenomenon. Everyone I have raised the subject with has their own cock and hen story.
I am now aware of chickens coming home to roost on roadsides throughout the land.
They are pecking away on the Pohuehue viaduct near Warkworth. Apparently some made a nuisance of themselves at the St Johns ambulance station at Silverdale a while back and had to be run out of town. Others frequent the Albany shopping centre, along with guinea fowl.
One contingent inhabits the rest stop on the Bombay exit from State Highway 1, another flocks to the Tairua hill vistas on Coromandel's SH 25, and still more have made a birdville of the charmingly forested lay-by in the Athenree Gorge on SH2 between Waihi and Katikati.
One faithful fowl follower and her family were long impressed by a solo occupancy of a King Country rest stop on SH3. This majestic bird was not one that felt the need to flock together with others.
A healthy specimen, it often perched in a tree on a by-way surrounded by farmland, and disdained handouts from passers-by.
"It never came running. It must have been pretty staunch to handle life alone in a rest area. You got the impression it liked being alone," my informant said.
Further along SH3, Taranaki way, another traveler has long been impressed by some magnificently coloured, "proper chooks" nesting in the "middle of nowhere."
But if we have solved the riddle of why the chicken crossed the road we fowl watchers have only raised more questions.
Why are they there? Did they break out of a battery? How do they survive? Could they be breeding a super race?
I took some queries to Transit Waikato area engineer Barry Dowsett. Naturally, he was well aware of several chook colonies but in 10 years he had known neither comment nor complaint from the motoring public.
At Opus Consulting, a major contractor to Transit, the feeling was that at some rest stops the birds were something of a tourist attraction. It seems travelers freely admired the birds and the birds admired the free grub.
Rob Darby, an expert in poultry breeding and a director of the Free Range Egg Company, surmises that many colonies are founded by refugee roosters. He reckons neighbourhood complaints about early morning, and over loud cock-a-doodle-doo-ing has prompted fond owners to throw their roosters upon roadside resources rather than give them the final chop.
Most of the birds he's seen - and he's seen them from Tuakau to Taupo - have been roosters "with the odd hen thrown in."
They will be real survivors, he said, because they will have had to contend with rats, cats and slim peckings. A once captive bird used to twice-daily feeds and plentiful water will have had quite a culture shock adjusting to bugs, berries and binned leftovers.
And while these renegade roosters can spend their days as cock-of-the-walk, safe from danger high in a tree the hardy hens have to build the nest and lay their eggs on the ground.
But for all that survival of the fittest, Mr Darby doubts poultry breeders would find much use for roadside roosters and their offspring.
"They'd have interesting genes but you wouldn't know what was in them. Some have crossed with bantams."
For all that, he admires the stature and colours of some of the magnificent specimens he has seen.
There seems only one thing left to do - invent a name for this burgeoning breed of chook.
Road Island Red? Lay-by Leghorns? By-way Buckeye?
Suggestions and observations welcome.
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