A local centenarian is on a mission to ensure the Ocean State’s favorite bird is not forgotten. It’s 100-year-old Wayne Durfee who likes hanging around a lot of young chicks— Rhode Island Reds, to be exact! The chicken is the Ocean State’s official bird.
“Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder. I think they’re beautiful, but not everybody does,” laughed Durfee, who celebrates his 100th birthday on Oct. 1. “That color of the Rhode Island Red, kind of the deep mahogany red of the body and the black tail feathers, is very distinctive.”
Durfee knows his poultry. He has been around hens and roosters ever since growing up on his parents’ farm in North Scituate. Even though it was a century ago, Durfee said he can recall life in rural Rhode Island.
“And I can remember very clearly going up and getting scratch feed. It’s a combination of corn and oats, wheat, scratch grains, and putting them in my pocket,” he said. “And then I’d go down to the house and I can remember sitting on the back, step in the sunshine, and I’d go, ‘Here chick, chick, chick, chick, chick,’ and my goodness they came from everywhere.”
Durfee left that bucolic setting right after high school to join the Navy during World War II, where he served as a torpedo man, second class. Durfee later went to school on the GI Bill, earning his master’s degree in poultry science at the University of Rhode Island in 1953. He was awarded a doctorate in poultry physiology from Rutgers University in 1963.
Durfee taught poultry raising and processing at URI for 38 years and was named a professor emeritus of animal science in 1989. He also volunteers at the South County Museum.
“My only goal, real purpose here, I guess, is to be sure that the hatching schedule is developed,” Durfee said.
He watches over the process like a mother hen to ensure there is a brood for the annual community event at the museum.
“Those eggs have to go in the incubator on a day in June in order to hatch three days before the Fourth of July, so that on the Fourth of July, little kids can come in and they have got chicks to handle,” Durfee said.
According to Durfee, the Rhode Island Red is a hardy breed that can withstand harsh, New England winters and is also gentle, social and productive — praised for both its meat and large egg-laying capabilities.
The ancestor of the colorful chicken was brought to our area aboard a whaling ship in New Bedford in 1854, according to Majory O’Toole, executive director of the Little Compton Historical Society.
“It was very customary in the 1800s for our farms to take market wagons to the docks in New Bedford, (and) bring produce to the whaling ships,” O’Toole said. “And in return, sometimes those farmers would return with items that had been brought in from all over the world.
“Little Compton poultry farmer William Tripp fancied an exotic rooster that had voyaged from the Far East. And William bred it with his barnyard chickens. And he noticed that their offspring were bigger and better than anything that we had seen in Little Compton before.”
The all-purpose poultry became popularly known as Tripp’s fowls. Another Little Compton farmer, Issac Wilbur, took it a step further, by crossing the rouge rooster with hens in his barnyard — and the Rhode Island Red revolutionized the industry.
”So at one time he had as many as 5,000 birds and the eggs and the birds are starting to be shipped all over the country, Canada and some sources even say Europe,” O’Toole said. “We like to say that Rhode Island was the poultry capital of the world at the end of the 1800s.”
Durfee said the Rhode Island Red not only became a staple of the local economy, but it also had a major impact on post-World War II Europe.
Decimated by the fighting, Durfee said, “The agriculture was in chaos over there. They had no big poultry industry and food was needed everywhere.”
He said the brown eggs and chicks were shipped by the thousands. In 1954, the Rhode Island Red was chosen as the Ocean State’s official bird. A monument in the Little Compton village of Adamsville pays tribute to the famous poultry.
Durfee said as farms are disappearing, he wanted to ensure the heritage breed would continue existing at the South County Museum for future generations to enjoy. So, a decade ago, he raised $10,000 to keep a perpetual flock there.
”It just seemed to me that since the Rhode Island Red was developed here in Rhode Island, that Rhode Island Reds should have a home here.”
And as for what Durfee thinks about what it represents, he said, “It’s a sort of a symbol of productivity and long life.”
Just like Durfee.
