There are thousands of wild chickens on Kauai. They are everywhere! And you can hear the roosters crow every minute of the day.
But it did not use to be that way. In 1992, Hurricane Iniki swept across the island and destroyed all the coops. The fowl were released and have proliferated ever since.
According to Modern Farmer, "All domestic chickens are descendants of a bird called the red junglefowl, native to various parts of, mostly, Southeast Asia. Domestic chickens these days are mostly so far removed from the red junglefowl that they can hardly be compared with it, but the Hawaiian chickens are a little bit different. Polynesians brought red junglefowl with them when they settled Hawaii, and only cross-bred them with domestic chickens following Captain Cook's landing on the archipelago in 1778. So the Hawaiian chickens are pretty recently developed from their wild form."
The usual joke is that feral chickens are the "official" birds of the island.
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What is a sixku? Find out here.
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