We had chickens twice in my life. Once as a kid and once as an adult. We were quite poor and the house we rented came with a chicken coup and chickens. One laid blue eggs. One we were told was a Polish breed, but I think someone made that up.

One day we found out that the hatchery closes to us killed the roosters and kept the hens. So we got 100 chicks for free. It was quite an experience. The first week in the pen, one of the chicks got poked by the wire and was bleeding. I learned that chickens are animals at that moment... The rest of the chicks pecked the red blood until they nearly pecked the chick to death. I'm sure I could write a post about how similar humans are:)

When they were were a few months old I went into the the chicken pen to feed them and they would fly at me, try to land on my nose and peck my eyes. I learned they could be vile animals. I was trying to feed them, but they weren't even grateful... All you could do was bat them down as they few at you.

My parents told me to lock the chickens inside the pen because there was a big storm coming. For some reason I never did and all but 3 were killed by the storm.

As an adult, my brother and nephews raised 30 wild turkeys, 15 chickens and some partridge. My Dad would go to the day out bread place and get a garbage bag full of old bread that we would feed them. They gave the chickens to our neighbor who had around 50 already and they let the other birds out to make a population in the wild. I still see about 20-30 turkeys in the summertime and I'm sure they continue on from those that my brother let loose into the wild.