Chickens Everywhere - St Thomas

To bad I'm not living on St. Thomas full time or I would have put a big dent in the chicken population. I'd get me one of those turkey fryers and ohhhhh boy fried chicken on Sundays just like when I was a kid. We would be sent out to dispatch (grab and kill a chicken) when we got home from church so that we could have fried chicken for Sunday dinner. We would chase them down, grab one and ring it's neck while my mother had a big pot of water getting hot on the outside fire pit. We would dunk the chickens in the pot for a few minutes, which helped the feather to come off easier.

I mentioned this to my in-laws on the north side of St. Thomas and they looked at me like I was nuts. I tried to tell them that free range chickens are far better for you than those chemical pumped up chickens you get in the stores. Makes my mouth water just thinking about it.

mike

Yes. Charming story.

All those "free range" aka feral chickens have been eating only
"God knows what?" Dog poop, cat scat, pesticide enhanced whatever.

Anyone that has grown up here knows that ya gotta purge toxins out
of land crabs, feral chickens, etc., before cooking and eating

Got any health problems?.

I ate them. These chickens eat mostly food scraps and cat food from the cat cafes. We purged it for a few days anyhow on cracked corn. The guy cooked it whole in a broth with dasheen and seasoning peppers. I was lucky enough to get the liver and the egg inside the chicken.

Like I said, Sparty;
Charming.
Have at it.
They eat whatever they find, dead carcasses, seeds, excrement, etc.
If I trap any more, I'll be sure to give you first dibs.
At least they'll have had a partial cat food diet.

The get fed kitchen scraps too. Always a fresh supply of lettuce and potato peels. I'm not going out of my way to eat them but if someone is kind enough to make and offer me some it would be rude to turn my nose up

I wouldn't think twice about eating them un-purged. Fried chicken, chicken and dumpins, roast chicken taters and carrots. I worked for a chicken farm when I was a boy that sold eggs commercially. Chickens in two feet x two feet cages packed 3 and 4 deep eating their own poop. The farmers feeding things like pepper which causes them to lay more eggs to the point that their productive organs wind up hanging out of their rectum. So no, I have no illusions about free range chickens. I would rather see this and take advantage of chickens that were able to live free and eat god knows what.

mike

You do realize that free range chickens were what people have eaten for 100's of years, even on St. Thomas. You couldn't just go to the store and buy chicken. I think all of the hormones that get pumped into the store sold chickens are what is causing a lot of the illnesses that we are seeing today like cancer.

You do realize that free range chickens were what people have eaten for 100's of years, even on St. Thomas. You couldn't just go to the store and buy chicken. I think all of the hormones that get pumped into the store sold chickens are what is causing a lot of the illnesses that we are seeing today like cancer.

So no one got cancer or sick when people were hunter gatherers? I think Carl Sagan said it best "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"

Yo, Sparty.
When we were hunters , gatherers,
back in the day, we didn't have 7billion and counting people's, waste, sewerage, septic, and toxic pesticide residues to deal with.

At women lived to the ripe age of "died at childbirth"

I'm glad to see that some people are willing to eat those chickens, though after reading those posts, I've lost my appetite for chicken.

My wife's family who were all born and raised on mthe Northside of St. Thomas didn't grow up eating chicken and had never even tasted chicken until one day my brother in laws asked my father to use his boat to go out and check their fish pots because their's had broken down. He agreed, but only if he could go along and I went along as well. While we were out at sea (I love that phrase, it makes me sound like one of the guys), my mother cooked up a bunch of fried chicken, potato salad and fixings for the crew when we returned. I was floored when they asked what THAT was pointing at the fried chicken. Needless to say, once they got a taste, they were licking the bowls and looking for more. This was back in the early 70's when there wasn't nearly as many chickens running loose.

mike

What a great story, Mike! Now fried chicken is everywhere.

I grew up here and we never had the roaming/feral chicken problem that now inundates all our islands. There did not use to be goats, pigs, cows and donkeys roaming on STT. Donkeys on STJ are a different matter as they've had wild donkeys there as far back as I remember. You sure didn't see hens and rooster roaming downtown or wherever you look.

Some years back on road going to Red Hook from Smith Bay, there was a horrendous accident when a speeding car hit a cow in the road coming around a corner. Killed the cow, the car was all "mash up" and people taken to hospital with injuries.

I find Mike's story a bit hard to believe. No offense.

I asked my friend about chicken, and he said it was a delicacy when he was growing up here. If they had it, it was usually baked and eaten on Sunday. Usually no eggs at breakfast: cereal, tea, bread. Fish was easier to get, but the other animals that Alana listed were more popular than chicken.

Don't get me started on chickens!! It is going to take some huge avian to human disease to get anyone (like the Health Dept) to do something about them.

Ha! In looking up on Wikipedia just now, I see that St Thomas is listed as a place known for feral chickens! We should be proud of that.:P

Wonder who added that entry? I might delete it.

Sigh, they tried to do something years ago, but there was an outcry for many reasons. If people would stop feeding them that would help.

I ate the chickens before when I was younger. I probably ate them before but the first time I noticed that I actually ate one was after Hurricane Marilyn. They died due to the storm and people clean em and ate em. I didn't die, I even raised them one time. No one is really raising them anymore. I think that's why they're running around. There's some chickens running around my yard now. I wanna build a pen and catch em one night. Fresh eggs.

They can't see in the night, so if you know what tree they're in at night you could just pick em up.

There's some changes here culturally. I remember when I was younger we'd hit fruit trees everyday after school. Kids no longer do that here. I was surprised of how many plum trees were filled with plums this summer. I took advantage.

For many years there was a chicken farm at the very bottom of Hull Bay Rd STT - I think it was lost in a hurricane.

I just caught a rooster on my property (we have about 30 chickens running around, only 1 rooster now: trying to build an enclosure so the kids can start a fresh egg business 😉 haha) and took him for a drive this morning, now he lives on a beach.

the chickens are great for bug control, I'll only allow one rooster though; we have a pretty good one now, I think he's constantly drunk, only really crows in the afternoon.

but that's STX... I can't imagine trying to catch them on those crazy hills of STT

I doubt he'll be at the beach long. He'll probably be fighting soon. That's the disadvantage of relocating roosters, at least on St Thomas. We lost at least 2 to "theft".

I got the Agriculture dept. here on STT to accept chickens and rposters after having a major hissy fit but you can hand them off to chickens farmers whose pens you've inspected and meets the "no escape" standards. The farmer I hand mine off to is up the hill. I had a vested interest in not catching the same ones over and over.

Thanks, Alana. What does the farmer do with the roosters? Does he sell eggs? If so, where?

Haven't had to trap and offload any for over a year or more since the original inundation. PM me for phone number. There's also a guy that someone told me about that will come and trap for you.

Sorry to say, have no idea if roosters or chickens end up as dinner. I know chickens get kept for eggs but think they stop laying after a couple years. (Not 100%sure but may have read that somewhere.)
I sure as check don't want them on my doorstep/property.
Been there, done that, no inclination to have them on property nor do I wish to raise them. Hopefully, they don't end up fighting.
My farmer doesn't do that, to the best of my knowledge.

I saw this show on TV once where a caterer went to a chicken farm to get eggs and the farmer explained why different kinds of chickens produced different tasting eggs. What this cater was after was an egg from a chicken (can't remember the breed) that was a really good forager and ate a lot of bugs which produced a very rich tasting egg. Interesting I thought. In my yard, we mostly have rubio and pinto chickens. We used to have a lot of part papu, but haven't seen any of them in awhile. They do eat as many bugs as they can catch.