Chickens Fouling Up Zoo Have Necks on Line

They come up out of the canyons just before feeding time, raid the bear biscuits and foul the monkeys’ chow. They hang out at the bus loading area, begging popcorn from the tourists, and occasionally they get run over, ruining everyone’s day.

Yet they are among the best-loved attractions of the country’s best-known zoo--descendants of a few pioneering fowl carrying on a 40-year tradition. They beguile babies and fill the frames of thousands of cameras trained on them every year.

The San Diego Zoo’s free-range chicken population is out of control, and zoo officials are facing an unenviable quandary: what is the cost-effective and humane method of reining in the birds without outraging tourists and chicken partisans on the zoo staff?

For three months, they have wrestled with the chicken problem in anguished meetings of administrators, veterinarians, curators and public relations men. Now they have settled on a solution--a fair compromise, zoo spokesman Jeff Jouett said Monday.

Sometime in the next few months there will be a giant chicken dragnet targeted at the 500 chickens, 120 Australian brush turkeys, and assorted peafowl and guinea fowl. Keepers will fan out across the 100-acre zoo with nets and humane traps for those that escape detection.

Every bird will go directly to the zoo hospital for quarantine and a physical. Then a small selection of the healthiest will be banded and “relocated” deep in the zoo’s three canyons. The result will be a modest 30 pair of chickens, 10 peacocks and six male guinea fowl.

All peahens will be banished, Jouett said. Brush turkeys will be caged to stop them from digging up rare plants. And from here on in, young adults will be weeded out before breeding age to prevent a recurrence of the problem.

In addition, the zoo will designate “chicken-free zones,” from which all interlopers will be removed and returned to their canyons. The zones will include the primate propagation pads, avian propagation center, forage warehouse, pheasant exhibits and bus-loading area.

“If possible, we’re going to make the general vicinity around the food stands a chicken-free zone,” Jouett said. “But there’s a bit of debate over whether that can be accomplished because they are quite naturally attracted to food. They are fairly bold. Some people say they’ve attacked children with their lunch.”

As for those benighted birds who don’t pass muster or who simply don’t make the cut, the zoo will attempt to find them homes in other zoos or responsible owners. If not, there is a last resort--death by lethal injection.

“We don’t like to think of euthanizing them,” said Jouett. “It’s kind of the last alternative to losing such rare birds as the Chinese monal pheasants.”

The monal pheasants--the only three in the world outside of China--died late last year from a virus tentatively traced to the chickens. For years, zoo vets had suspected the fowl of carrying disease. The pheasant deaths, Jouett said, were the last straw.

As it turns out, the free-range birds can carry a wide variety of illnesses ranging from bacterial infections like salmonella to perhaps avian tuberculosis, said Dr. Marilyn Anderson, director of pathology for the zoo.

They move parasites from cage to cage. They pick up fecal bacteria on their feet.

They also dig up rare plants, making life difficult for zoo horticulturists, Jouett said. They tear open packets of everything from meat to fruit and seeds, placed by the zoo food-service workers behind exhibits in anticipation of feeding time.

“Occasionally one or two will venture across an exhibit with a carnivore in it and add to that animal’s food,” Jouett mused. “So I guess (the other animals) get back as much as they pay.”

Many of the chickens are in fact Indian and Burmese “jungle fowl” descended from the pioneering 27 let loose in the zoo in 1942 by K.C. Lint, then curator of birds. Lint intended them as an added attraction--colorful, surprising and within reach.

But the jungle fowl proliferated beyond control with the help of well-meaning citizens discreetly unloading Easter loot. Every year, people dump Easter chicks over the zoo’s fence, Jouett said. Over the years, they and the jungle fowl interbred.

Now the birds have overrun the place--even sometimes performing a public service. They scavenge spilled popcorn and hold down the insect population by eating larvae. Jouett said they have also become “one of the most favorite animals in the zoo.”

“You see those adorable chicks--everyone wants to stop and feed them popcorn and take their picture,” he said. “People with thousands of dollars of camera equipment are in the zoo with the most exotic wildlife in the world, and here they are lying on the sidewalk taking pictures.”

Vets and curators argued for total elimination, Jouett said. But members of the public relations staff intervened. They talked about the jungle fowl’s popularity and the letters from tourists and surveys showing the chickens as one of the zoo’s top attractions.

“Well, I personally have mixed feelings about it,” Jouett mused Monday when asked his feelings about the planned solution. “I’m particularly fond of the guinea fowl. They kind of walk like Groucho Marx and look like they have herringbone capes on.

“But I am sympathetic to the veterinarians and bird curators who have to watch their exotic birds that are drawn from all over the world. . . . I can’t help but agree that the death of those birds is not worth the sacrifice just to have jungle fowl overrunning the place.”