In Java, an island among 17,000 Indonesian islands and as large as Britain, live 124million people. The population of Kampung Chickens is estimated to be around 280 million.
Kampung chickens are chickens reared in people's backyards and in and out of their homes. They live as they jolly well please from the time they emerge from eggs, to when they are slaughtered for food. They are one reason why there is no starvation in Java where about twenty percent live on about one dollar a day. In Java, it would seem that there's a chicken in every pot. It is an accepted practice that if you are chicken-less and hungry, you walk along till you encounter a chicken poking around, entice it, and make off into the shrubbery before its squawking protests brings the owner out. Owners deprived of a chicken, or two in this manner are at worst momentarily irritated and after a cursory look this way and that, go back in to finish their chicken soup.
As food, kampong chickens are considered very nutritious because they fend for themselves, feed prolifically on whatever is lying around, and are considered organic. In modern supermarkets, these scrawny, barely fleshed birds fetch higher prices than plumb range fed chickens. Plucked and asleep in supermarket freezers they seem just as pugnacious and defiant, as they were when alive.
Unlovable, But Who Cares?
Kampung Chickens have never been endowed with “good looks.” Even day-old chicks it are difficult to fuss and coo over. They grow rapidly to teenage. At this time they are equipped with scaly, lanky legs, a bomb of a body, a long neck on which is loosely affixed an atrociously ugly head. Their mothers abandon them pretty quickly. By early middle age they are scarred, defeathered in parts and sport a limp. Thankfully they are dispatched by late middle age. This is the time when they are judged to have absorbed enough nutrition to be “good for you.”
Who Owns Who?
Kampung chickens are never actually reared. They are nearly always inherited from one's father, grandfather and so on. The current generations of chickens are likely to be descendants of a long line of illustrious chickens. Like a Patek Philippe they are never owned but held in trust for the next generation.
Sometimes it is unclear who owns who? The chickens officially have the rights to forage in the backyard and the neighborhood. However they are tolerantly allowed to use the house, very much as it were their own. They strut around with their chicks freely. Eggs are laid on the family sofa. Hatching is often done in the clothes cupboard. They have a strong preference to roost in the back of the television cabinet. Consequently it is not unusual to hear the five-o-clock crowing with the early news.
Land of Plenty of Chickens
Java is all volcanic and extremely fertile. Everything grows in this island.Kampung chickens therefore have an extensive menu. They eat without a break, except when roosting or during sex. When bored with what Nature has laid out for them they peck at and gobble up what man has discarded. Newspapers, plastics, buttons, shoe laces, cigarette butts and nails are fought over and polished off with great relish. Yet these birds never seem to fatten up. They are immune from all blights and diseases. They remain scrawny but tough. The female of the species is stronger than the male. The cock is all show with little substance. The female is a smart bundle foraging and pecking around, it seems, with set business-like objectives. The humans amongst kampong chickens seem to have somehow acquired their characteristics.
When The Time Comes
When the time comes for them to be dispatched for the pot, all the children in the neighbored are recruited along with the canniest adults to catch the doomed
chicken or chickens. The chase with much shrieks and squawks could last for an hour or so and cover several square kilometers. But once caught the birds stop squawking and stoically accept their fate-“If a chicken has got to go, it's got to go.”
Millions of chickens go every day to be part of nourishing meals all over Java. Kampong chicken transportation is big business employing thousands and involving hundreds of vehicles. Not unusual considering the millions of chickens dispatched daily. Trains, buses, trucks, taxis, rickshaws, bicycles and bunches of these poor birds hitched up like saddle-bags on motorcycles are the preferred means of transportation. In emergencies it has been known for chickens to fly concealed on board commercial airlines. Their silent acceptance of their fate is particularly helpful during surreptitiously devised conveyances.
Chicken Cuisine
At their destinations Kampung chickens are reserved for the healthier recipes at establishments known for their nutritious cuisine. They are never part of Hainan Chicken Rice and are shunned by Kentucky Fried. They are destined for much nobler purposes; the nucleus of a cuisine of a healthy and virile Java.
