by Erin Bankston
In May 2017, I got a call from my friend who had just found a male chicken that had been tossed to the side at a chicken plant after all its friends had been taken to slaughter. The bird had a broken leg, couldn’t walk and was mean as a snake. When he arrived at my farm, we treated him like we did all our other chickens. We nursed him back to health, made sure he had plenty of exercise and limited his diet (because of his breed). We also spent lots of time together, and somehow, that mean old bird became one of the sweetest and most personable chickens on our farm. We named him Mr. Mayflower.
Mr. Mayflower has lived much longer than most broilers. In that time, he has grown bigger, and many of his friends have voluntarily moved away from his coop, leaving him alone. He is too big to hang out with my little bantam chickens, and he gets major anxiety if he’s around a lot of movement because he has bad eyesight. I knew he was lonely, but he seemed content hanging out near the other chickens, albeit separated by a fence.