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The Sim/The Daily Herald
Fejta Feather Farm: A little bit of
By EDITH BIERHORST BACK
HERALD BUREAU CHIEF
BAY ST. LOUIS — It all started six years ago with a few pigeons in a gazebo on Lake Pontchartrain. Today Stan Fejta’s bird collection, numbering about 2,000—“I never counted,” he says—is one of the largest in the Southeast.
Some busy workers spend their weekends on the golf course. Others take to the seas for some fancy fishing. Still others stay home and decorate cakes. Stan and Helen Fejta leave their businesses in New Orleans every weekend to join their birds at the tranquil Fejta Feather Farm on the Leetown Road in
Hancock County.
Stretched over more than 200 acres, the farm includes sets of intricately-designed cages, big enough, for instance, for the gaudy Siamese fireback pheasant and his very plain wife, to stroll or fly in the fresh air, come inside for a snack and some shade. The center aisle between the rows of cages is for the humans who keep the vittles supplied, look out for any signs of distress and just to walk and admire the exotic creatures.
Fejta escorts his visitors among the birds, introducing them, explaining why the male fireback is so fancy and his wife so dull-brown
dowdy. Mama and the family’s eggs or chicks, he says, are hidden in undergrowth. In case of a threat, the male shows himself—and neither man nor beast could miss that nervous bundle of color, including red feet and combs around his eyes. “He’s the expendable one in nature.” Fejta says.
The myna bird is more interested in people than other birds, delivering a rather lewd wolf-whistle as the group passed him by. Fejta says a friend, who couldn’t afford to have a bird with such an uncouth vocabulary around, gave it to him to civilize. “We don't try to tame birds,” Fejta says. “We try to