Missing Oviedo chickens mystery solved

For decades, from the post office to the Ace Hardware, visitors to downtown Oviedo could see chickens walking around the storefronts and parking lot of the Oviedo Shopping Center on North Central Avenue and Geneva Drive. Then, in December, all of a sudden, the Oviedo chickens were missing.

Despite some chickens spotted exploring behind the shopping center’s businesses, none populated the fronts anymore.

But what happened? 

The chickens can still be found in nearby areas, such as the Oviedo library on Division Street and in the plaza across the street – home to The TownHouse Restaurant and Kelly’s Homemade Ice Cream – leaving employees who work in the Oviedo Shopping Center in the dark about what happened to the Oviedo chickens who inhabited the center. But that does not mean they do not have their theories. 

Coyotes and raccoons got to them?

The Geneva Drive construction spooked them?

After-hour fowl play?

“They’re not [just] walking away, I can tell you that,” Ace Hardware store manager Kevin Cecile said. 

In reality, it’s much more straightforward.

Due to health and sanitary concerns, especially with multiple restaurants and a bakery in the shopping center, Nelson and Co. Inc, the owners of the property since it was built, took action.

“The chickens have been humanely removed,” Beverly Evans, who works in community relations for Nelson and Co., said. 

History behind the chickens

Nelson and Co., which was established in Oviedo in 1886, built the shopping center in the 1970s, Evans said.  Oviedo Mayor Megan Sladek, who is also the founder of the Oviedo Preservation Project, said she believes the chickens started arriving around 1982.

Through the decades, the shopping center would see just a handful of chickens roam its storefronts — maybe three to four, according to Evans. But over the last few years, that number exploded to upwards of 15, multiple sources said, increasing the issues surrounding them. The rise in the number was in part due to people dropping off unwanted chickens, she said.

The chickens became an attraction, bringing passersby and foot traffic to the plaza.

”You’d always see people pulling up, stopping, taking pictures, thinking it was the greatest thing,” Christian Iselin, manager at Two Maids cleaning service located in the shopping center, said. “It definitely was kind of like the tourist attraction here for a little while.”

There are even Facebook groups dedicated to the chickens.

And while many people would just come to see and interact with the chickens, others would feed them, keeping the birds in the location. 

”When people started feeding them on the sidewalk, you can imagine, they start congregating around where that food is,” Evans said. “You just have to let your mind run away with you and realize how bad it got.

“We have discouraged it, and actually we’re putting some signs up in the shopping center … about dumping the chickens and feeding them,” she said. “People need to know that’s a terrible thing to do. These chickens in the beginning were considered free range. … The problem was caused by inconsiderate people who did not think through the consequences of their behavior. That is why, in a nutshell, that’s why the chickens disappeared.”

The removal of the feed definitely caught the eyes of those who work in the plaza. 

“There used to be a bunch of food that was kind of put out on the premises,” Iselin said. “In front of the different stores, there’d be water and all that. And then one day — we specifically didn’t do it — but one day it stopped and then it’s literally overnight the chickens were gone. It’s crazy.”

While the birds were an attraction for many — Teddy Nguyen, manager of Super Nails in the shopping center said “the chicken is a big thing around Oviedo, I like the chicken, I don’t mind about the chicken,” — some of those that see them most often do not feel the same.

“I hate the chickens, honestly,” Cecile said. “They roost on our fence right here and it’s constant every morning you [have to] clean it up.”

The amount of chicken feces led to Nelson and Co. having employees power wash the plaza multiple times per month, at a cost of $700 per wash, Evans said. 

”You’re dumping chicken feed on someone’s private property, which causes another person to have to clean your mess up,” Evans said.

The abandonment of chickens is not just a problem for the shopping center. It happens across the city.

“I have had people drop chickens off at my front doorstep before,” Sladek said. “Three of them in a fish tank.”

Having the chickens walk freely so close to eateries has created other concerns as well.

”I’ve actually been a little surprised that the health department — there’s never been chickens inside any of those restaurants — but I’m surprised that there’s been no issues with it even being in close proximity,” Sladek said. 

Evans also said she has seen the feed lead to pests in the shopping center.

”Would you want to walk [there]?” she said. “Do you want to run a restaurant with [chickens] sitting on top of your tables, and then when you dump food, I would go down there and see roaches in the middle of the day. You’re attracting roaches, ants, rats, mice.”

“I have seen people pull up in their car and pull out a whole bag of chicken feed and dump it in the shopping center parking lot,” she said.

In addition to having 24-hour surveillance at the shopping center, Nelson and Co. has put signage up throughout the plaza reminding people not to feed the chickens or leave abandoned animals there, and informing them of the penalties for doing so with a QR code.

The QR code links to Florida statute 828.13, which refers to both the confinement and abandonment of animals, can lead to a misdemeanor and be punishable by a fine of up to $5,000 and/or imprisonment.

“If they are caught doing that, they may face the consequences of the state and county law,” Evans said. “You would not dump a cat or a dog down there. Why would you dump a domesticated animal of any kind down there? That’s cruel and abusive.”