A Tale of Two Roosters: Part One, A Separate Peace.

A Tale of Two Roosters: Part One, A Separate Peace

Now that we had two rooster, a new political landscape needed to develop in the confines of the chicken run. Herself and I had read and experienced the stories of others with multiple roosters and were calculating all of the possible scenarios.

Harkening back to my fading childhood memories, our old rooster Romeo, a Rhode Island Red of great dignity and leadership skills, was a stoic character who was normally disinclined to fight. It should be noted that the circumstances of the chickens my family had in my youth were slightly different. We had more property, more hens, and more time and space for that flock to roam and forage to their hearts’ delight. Also we had more trouble with predators, so everything in life is some kind of trade off in one way or another.

In those days, when chicks were born, my parents would let them be and integrate into the flock naturally. There were more hens … enough to keep a rooster busy. I do recall one occasion when a rooster was born and he came of age. I don’t recall trouble with the two roosters fighting and thus they coexisted. Until the day my parents realized that the new rooster had developed a ‘sub flock’ of himself and a few hens. This is also natural and not an issue except that while Romeo would dutifully lead the hens into the coop and to their roosts at night when the sun was setting, the young rooster-come-lately would lead his sub flock to the lower branches of the trees at the edge of the forest. This is the least safe place for chickens to be in a world of raccoons, foxes, weasels, stray dogs, and all manner of other dangers to be. My parents culled that rooster very quickly and the political divide was no more.

In these modern times where I am a fully adult person (don’t laugh, legally and physically, I am), I had researched proper ‘chicken math’ and understood the ratio of one rooster for about a dozen hens is the right mix. Here we had TWO roosters only seven hens between them. Although this could be a problem, herself and I considered every anecdote we had read and seen to help guide us through the near future.

Two bachelor roosters. There is a roadside farm stand along the highway about a dozen or so miles from us owned by a kindly old Italian gentleman who really knows his way around produce. One day when we stopped there (before we had obtained any chickens, but we had already been considering it) we noticed that he had two fully grown roosters right there near the entrance. They were loose. They were hunkered down by the shrubbery as content as could be without causing a moment’s concern for anyone. We asked the proprietor about the curious circumstance and he explained that although he does not keep any poultry on his farm, his brother had encountered these two ‘spare’ roosters that were due to be culled. Spare roosters are as welcome as the plague, because normally they only cause trouble, but in a moment of sympathy, this man’s brother collected the doomed roosters and he had agreed to ‘adopt’ them for so long as they caused him no trouble. The two roosters, with no one but each other for company, were fast friends and lived quiet peacefully by the farm stand. But … this should be made very clear … there were no hens for them to compete over!

We had checked in with other poultry keepers and discovered three main themes.

1)      The sub flock. This is a scenario that harkens to the situation I described from my youth. More than one rooster is OKAY provided that you have enough hens to avoid too much trouble. While the roosters may have the occasional dust-up over political affairs, the dominant one will keep watch over the main flock while the other(s) will develop smaller ‘sub flocks’. This, of course, would be the best scenario, but with so few hens and no room to properly have many more, we felt it was very unlikely to turn out this way.

2)      The submissive rooster. This was the scenario we were hoping for if the first could not be achieved. The dominant rooster runs the flock. A few initial fights and the other rooster(s) capitulate to the superior rooster. Peace is obtained, but only the dominant rooster has breeding rights while the other rooster(s) maintain a quiet existence on the outskirts of the flock.

3)      Cull the extra rooster(s). Some will cull the extra roosters as soon as they realize they are roosters, carefully sexed while still chicks, or raised separately for the table to be butchered when they are just about old enough for their first crow. Occasionally, if the older rooster is now past his prime, he’ll be culled, but by then the meat is too tough and is only suitable for soup stock. I had even read on forum poster who explained that when extra roosters were born, they would cull the gentle, easy going roosters and keep the angry, aggressive roosters because they were much better suited for warding off predators.

We decided to wait and see. Here’s how it went.

Initially, Coq Au would chase Floki a bit and ‘explain’ to the lad that he was the dominant rooster and that Floki had better get used to that idea. Coq Au was never overly cruel, but firm and fair in exercising his understanding of control. Floki would run a bit of a distance away, and would longingly watch the doings of the flock from the outskirts. Herself and I were starting to be concerned that our little boy would not have a quality of life and began considering trying to adopt him out to someone with hens, but no rooster. But, so long as there was no bloodshed, we were reasonably content with the notion that even the life of a submissive rooster would be a good life.

In those days of Floki’s early adulthood, I began to notice a strange but encouraging dynamic developing. Even with so few hens, and Coq Au being so good at keeping a watchful eye, there would always be a girl or two that would wander off to seek their own foraging in a different part of our small yard. Coq Au would usually keep company with the larger part of the flock and round up stray girls when necessary. But now, with an additional rooster, Floki would keep the watch with the stray girls. Perhaps, I thought, a sub flock was possible in this micro environment, even with the bad chicken math.

Another strange occurrence was happening around that time. Whenever I would collect the flock to go into the run, Coq Au would invariably take up the rear, just in front of me, but behind the girls to help collect them … while at the same time, squaring off with me if he thought I somehow became aggressive. But with this new situation, Floki would lead the parade of hens. Taking the point position, they would follow him while Coq Au made sure all was well from the rear. Our two roosters were actually creating a cooperative effort in flock management.

One day, as I was standing on my porch, with the flock about ten feet away in the sun, some small bird of prey – a cooper’s hawk, I think – swept down out of nowhere. This hawk was too small to carry off a hen, but could’ve caused some real damage. Hens went fleeing in all directions for the cover of shrubbery and the like, but Coq Au Vin, full of roosterly aggression LEAPT into the air in an attempt to get to grips with the offender who was full on the wing. Floki ALSO made a half hearted youthful attempt to get to grips with the hawk. Coq Au may have even landed a talon on the invader, it was that close. The hawk flew off and the roosters and I went about the business of collecting the hens and soothing shattered nerves. We paraded back into the run after that.

This should be made clear. The events of the hawk happened within the span of an instant in time. It was the damnedest thing I had ever seen, and although I am glad to have been on hand at the right moment to assist, my slow human reaction was no match for my two roosters! Medals were awarded and full military honors given.

On a side note, I am not handy with a camera, that’s why I have so few pictures on the blog. I do not have a good picture of Floki, but Floki grew up to become an Adonis in rooster form. He stood tall, well proportioned, and looked like the original model for every weather vane ever produced. To be fair, Coq Au, although not as tall, is also a magnificent looking creature and more barrel chested. From the few photos, you can see he is a powerful beast, indeed.

As the weeks passed, however, things began to take a turn. By and by in subtle degrees. I first noticed that Floki, when watching the stray girls, would try to get ‘the sex’ on the sneak. He was NOT accustomed to doing a proper mating dance and had NOT learned how to be a proper, gentle lover the way Coq Au had become. A hen would often squawk and spurn his advances causing Coq Au to immediately charge over to put an end to the situation toot sweet. Floki would keep trying, however and this was causing some friction.

It is the habit of chickens to go into the coop at night as the sun sets. Sometimes, pecking order plays a part, sometimes not, but they generally filter in one by one until one or two hens are left in the hard. As the sky darkens, they make their way in as well. The usual circumstance is for Coq Au to go in first (I consider it likely that this is because after the stresses of watching the flock all day and listening to the incessant chatter of the hens about union meetings, egg quotas, gossip about broody-ness and what not, he’s had quite enough and is content to turn in). Hortense is invariably the last to go in. As I’ve described ad nauseam, she is not at the bottom of the pecking order and has no political issues, she mearly regards her alone time as sacred and enjoys a few moments peace for herself. But the new trend was for Coq Au and Floki to be out after the girls (including Hortense) have gone in. They would be arguing. A back and forth squabble of roosterly squawking would occur. It really did sound like a heated conversation. One that reminded me of an old anti-drug PSA of a father confronting a son about drug use, but in our context, the conversation went more like this:

Coq Au: You were trying to have sex again with one of your aunts. What’s wrong with you? Where did you learn that tape of behavior? ANSWER ME!

Floki: I learned it by watching YOU, dad. I learned it by watching you!

Things began to come to a head one Saturday while I was out with the hose cleaning the chicken fonts and providing fresh water. Both roosters squared off directly, only Floki was NOT inclined to back down. Cowls were fully flared and they came to blows. A goodly blast from the hose calmed them down. The troubling part of this was that Floki was no longer content to be chided, he would need to test his meddle directly in pitched battle.

I set about the business of attempting to find a suitable home for Floki. Extra roosters are next to impossible to adopt out, so I was still hoping that they would resolve the issue between themselves without resorting to bloodshed. Hopefully, one good battle would be all it took for one rooster to prevail and one to learn to be content with his place in the world.

Childhood Can Be Heartbreaking.

Childhood Can Be Heartbreaking

When I was small and my parents had decided to get chickens, they had fixed up an old outbuilding on the property, obtained the needed supplies, and the neighbors kindly had given them some fertile eggs. We incubated them in the house with a small incubator and witnessed the hatch before our eyes. I am so grateful for my parents for growing up how I did and getting to see the things that a lot of kids miss these days.

The following spring, one of those hens hatched her own babies and to this day it is one of my mother’s fondest memories watching them emerge from the coop for the first time … little yellow fluff balls … their mother gently calling them outside and patiently teaching them how to scratch around and all. I saw these things when I was young. I delighted in collecting the fresh eggs. I watched where I stepped when barefoot in the yard. I witnessed my father dispatch predators in the coop. But there are sometimes little things that you don’t pick up on as a child that you understand later. I’m not sure if it was my parents, the times, or my own moral compass, but I find myself instilled with a strong sense for nature in all its forms. You don’t change nature, you understand it … and … when it is YOUR flock and YOUR patch of nature that you are responsible for, you manage it. You gently help shape it, but it is a light touch where less is more.

Two days after Lagertha hatched (one chick out of fourteen eggs … my light ‘touch’ needed to be just a little more involved) she emerged from the coop under mama’s watchful eye. I had read accounts of roosters and/or dominant hens picking on new babies so I watched with careful eye as often as I could. Mama stayed close by, always clucking with a gentle cluck. Some of the other girls were annoyed by the new member that would one day have full voting rights with the union and they sometimes tried to assert themselves over the baby. Mama was always there, but what about Coq Au?

Turned out, whenever lil Lagertha ran afoul of one of the hens and Mama was a pace or two too far away, she would dash under Coq Au’s legs and he would stand watch while the offender would then skulk away! For all of his faults, he’s a good chicken daddy as well.

So, chickens maintain their own politics and it was only a light touch they needed in this matter. They’re never going to act like people, in order to manage things, I have to think more like a chicken. If a hen picks on another hen, it is just politics so long as no blood is being spilled and no one is injuring on another.

But … I have a human heart. The great and powerful Oz once counseled the Tin Man that hearts will never be practical until they become unbreakable. Each night, the flock would hop up on their roosts as normal while mama and baby would bed down together in the nest. Touching to see, and a reaffirming of life. As each week passed, Lagertha grew larger and grew more and more feathers. Then, one fateful night it happened. I went out to the coop one evening and heard the most mournful cry I could ever hear emanating from within. I peeked through the window and saw that mama had had enough of child rearing. Little Lagertha was quite big enough and she wasn’t going to ‘baby’ the young chick anymore. Mama had climbed up onto the roost with the flock and Lagertha, still too little, but fully feathered, was left crying in the nest. I fought every one of my instincts to keep myself from pulling mama down, or attempting to put Lagertha up, or to keep from bringing the crying hen into the house for the night for special treats and a warm pillow. Lagertha had to learn to ‘chicken’ and that sometimes is hard. This particular situation was made harder in my mind by that fact that had more eggs hatched, Lagertha would’ve at least had siblings to share her misery and to turn to for warmth and comfort. But the poor baby was on its own to face the politics of the flock. A singular member of her generation.

She cried at night for a few days … less and less. Mama and baby were still inseparable during the day and Lagertha’s Aunt Hortense, who normally likes to be by herself, palled around a bit too.

Eventually, Lagertha grew big enough to squeeze in onto the roost with the big girls, but it was a hard few days to watch.

For me, the experience is like how you feel when you witness a small child whose balloon has gotten away from them. Maybe they cry, maybe they laugh, but for them the world quickly moves on. I always feel more devastated for the child witnessing the balloon escape than the child does themself!

Coq Au Vin's Sentence of Execution is Commuted.

Coq Au Vin’s Sentence of Execution is Commuted.

With herself and I now looking forward to the warm spring days, we were turning our attention to preparing the ground for gardening. This is where Coq Au came as near to a death sentence as he had gotten ever before. My wife is normally a confident woman who is perfectly capable in all ways of confronting any situation out before her. One of the reasons that I love her so much is that she has a personality strong enough to keep me from getting away with bullshit. She moves through her life that way with a strong sense of rooting out other people’s bullshit and feeling perfectly comfortable with calling them out on it. Somehow, she was unable to bring that wonderful trait of hers to bear in dealing firmly with our rooster. She was reaching a level of being upset over the prospect of facing an angry rooster every time she wanted to enjoy her yard and the company of her chickens. She let me know these feelings with no uncertainty and my heart was breaking for her over the dilemma and for Coq Au. With a torn mind, I continued to drag my feet over the issue.

Then a miracle happened. The miracle of life.

There comes a time in a young hen’s life when she gets ‘the urge’. Now that our hens were grown and the warm weather was fast approaching, little Mildred went ‘broody.’

When a hen goes ‘broody’ it means they are inclined to sit on their eggs for the purpose of hatching chicks.

What it REALLY means is that they will pluck out their own feathers near their chest to create a bald patch to make skin-to-egg contact for greater warmth for their developing babies, eat extra food to put on a little weight, get a glossy, far away stare, flatten themselves out over the clutch of eggs, growl and even peck at anyone that comes near them, and stay there for 21 days. They will turn the eggs three times a day. They will hardly get up to poop, eat, or drink. That is tough on a chicken. There is no knowing when a chicken will go broody except to say they won’t do it in cold conditions, realizing that baby chicks might not survive. There is no way to stop a hen from going broody if it is determined to do so (except through some cruel methods that don’t always work anyway) and there is no way to force a hen to go broody if they don’t want to. Some breeds are more inclined to go broody than others, some individual hens are more likely to go broody than others.

Some things that you should do if your hen goes broody and you want to encourage her: make sure she has food and water close by so that she can take nourishment without straying very far. You should move her to an isolated spot from the flock so that she will not be disturbed. The trouble with this is that with a young and inexperienced hen, of she is disturbed, she may lose interest and give up sitting. Sometimes, even if everything is perfect, she will give up after a few days anyway because it was just too damn hard. Mildred seemed determined.

We didn’t have an isolated place for her, so here is what we did and the mistakes we made along the way, one of these mistakes is what led to Coq Au ultimately being spared from his very near brush with execution.

We reached under her and felt two eggs, we immediately put two or three more under her. We left her alone in the nesting box for several days, making sure she did have food close by. We wanted to make sure she was going to ‘stay the course’ on her own and we had no suitable place to isolate her. That was mistake number one.

Chickens are social animals. You can spend days and weeks just observing the political structure that makes up to proverbial ‘pecking order’. What we never knew was the social nature of ‘motherhood’. It seems, that as soon as the ladies hear that one of their own have gone broody, they all stop by to offer words of encouragement and ‘help’. It goes sort of like this … when another hen drifts into the coop and sees that ‘thousand yard stare’ of the broody hen, she says “oh … are you doing that thing? Here, let me help you, since you’re doing that ‘thing’ anyway!” and she’ll climb in on TOP of the expectant mother and lay another egg. The mother will at some point scoop that egg under her along with the rest. The laying hen then feels like she is ‘participating’ in the miracle of birth and ‘helping’ the flock. In other words, the lazy bitch is dropping off her responsibilities with someone else who will do the work for her!

So, after a few days, poor Mildred was sitting on FOURTEEN eggs. With no way to tell for sure which were her original clutch or not, I could only remove a few of the eggs, the only ones I could be ‘sure’ were new and not already several days into a potential hatch. It was then that I decided to affix some plastic garden fencing around her area to help isolate her. Since her box was smack in the middle of the nesting boxes, it was particularly awkward and the whole while I was afraid I’d be making too much noise and disturbance and interrupt her concentration. To my horror, I discovered that in spite of my best efforts, and in spite of the fact that it did REDUCE the frequency of interlopers into her private space, some determined hens still managed to ignore the FIVE OTHER EMPTY nesting boxes and go through great length to crawl past the barrier with some difficulty to continue to ‘help’ poor overburdened Mildred.

So, I had to let it be, but as the days passed, it was easier to identify ‘new’ eggs under her. Unfortunately, with so many eggs under her, more mistakes happened. With so many eggs to turn, sometimes one or more would become broken. That was okay, because there were far too many. Also, some of the eggs might not be fertile. You know that old expression about counting your chickens? Well … yeah.

While this was going on, herself and I figured there would be more babies than our flock would absorb, so we decided to inform our little chicken network. We reached out to Tara who had a few chickens to let her know that if ever we had too many hens, we would gladly gift her with one or more if she wanted and if we had extra. We reached out to a neighbor with a few hens for the same reason, and we reached out to Dave, and old service buddy of mine who had a lot of land and a small flock way up in upstate NY, although ferrying hens six hours away seemed a difficult task. Also, we reached out to Bruce. Bruce is a tall, burly man who lives on a farm that is about 12 miles away. His family grown hay, straw, corn, and it has been in his family for generations, but they currently had no livestock. We discussed with him the prospect of getting chickens and if ever he wanted to start his own flock, we’d be happy to donate a few chicks and even a spare rooster if we were faced with the likely hood that one was born. We could only have ONE ROOSTER and we’d have to find a home for a spare (whichever one we felt was the ‘spare’ wink wink). So, with several potential sources for spare birds to have homes, we felt confident of a successful future for any chicks born … ones that might be staying, and ones that might have to go to good homes.

This next bit is really important. Don’t miss this bit … it is about how Coq Au Vin’s place in our home was assured.

A broody hen will only get off of the nest for about fifteen minutes at most. Take some food, stretch the legs, then back at it. If ever she spends too much time away from that nest, the eggs will become cold and the developing chicks will die. So, sometime after two weeks into sitting, I came home from work, went out to give treats to the flock, and Coq Au was giving me ‘the look’. He stood there still as a statue with malice in his eyes. Just standing there in the run, next to the nesting boxes. Glaring his hatred at me and all things human. I fed treats to the girls and glared right back at him. I steeled myself for the day’s inevitable onslaught … but it didn’t come. He clucked his usual angry clucks at me. Flapped his wings mightily, and glared. He didn’t move and inch toward me and when he’s in this state, he normally goes on the attack immediately. I was perplexed. “What the hell is wrong with YOU?” I testily demanded.

A realization struck me. I took a quick ‘beak’ count. Mildred was OUTSIDE IN THE RUN! She had slipped past the enclosure in the coop and couldn’t get back in to the eggs! Unlike what you’d expect from a nervous mother, she was happy as a clam to be out and having treats. Coq Au Vin, on the other hand, stood there stone still, KNOWING something was wrong and trying to do everything roosterly possible to alert me that life was at stake. He not only was already good at protecting his flock, but he was even trying desperately to protect the unborn!

I had no time to muse over his feelings at that moment, it was 5:30 or so, the sun was high, and temps in the coop were still hot, so I hoped against hope that we still had a chance. I scooped up Mildred in a hurry and gently deposited her on that nest. There was one cracked egg in there (something that had happened before a few times) so I snatched that egg out and hoped even some of the ones left had not gone cold!

I disposed of that egg. A cracked egg will not hatch, and I was horrified to discover that there was a developing chick (now passed on, of course) in that shell. That … out of everything else that had happened before or has happened since … was my most heartbreaking moment. To this day, I have never told my wife about what I saw in that discarded egg, and even now, nearly two years later, my heart still hurts over it.

Still no time, I called my wife and begged her to tell me what time she had last checked on Mildred. She told me four o’clock. That means that Mildred slipped the fence sometime AFTER four o’clock and was returned by 5:30. That window was still too long, but narrow enough that I help out hope that some of those babies had survived.

There were too many eggs to take care of. There were a couple of broken ones along the way. She slipped off of the nest for some undetermined amount of time. This was a disaster … to think she might have gone through three weeks of that for naught.

Four days later, it was Saturday. Herself was at work and I checked the nest. Mildred was off of it again, but standing right there. I looked carefully and one of the eggs was ‘pipped’! There was a live baby chick being born before my eyes! I took the above picture and sent it to my wife. It would be hours before the baby would emerge, so I left the situation alone.

The next day, my wife and I checked to find one healthy, happy, baby chick! The TV show Vikings, being popular at that time, we gave this new life the strong name Lagertha, one of the strongest female figures on the show!

We waited a few more days hoping more would hatch, but it was not to be. Two days later, Mildred emerged and proudly introduced baby Lagertha to the world. Unlike the first generation, Lagertha would be raised by a real chicken mommy with the sun on her face and grass under her feet. We were disappointed that there weren’t more hatched, but relieved that new life was possible for our little flock.

I quietly disposed of the unhatched eggs, without deep investigation into the contents.

I had given my wife the details of Coq Au Vin’s actions that day. I told her, and she agreed, that it didn’t matter how much of a douche bag he was determined to be, he was the best rooster for our flock that a person could hope to own. I don’t need him to be nice or gentle, I need him to be a good protector to those girls.

BONUS POST - BABY VIDEO!

BONUS POST - BABY VIDEO

My wife found this lil video of the flock when they were two weeks old and having their first oatmeal!

Growing Up.

Growing up

Time in the playpen under the heat lamp is that special time when new parents take pictures, obsess over the details, grandma visits, and baby chicks start feathering out, developing personalities and growing up.

 

By late April they were becoming larger, entering that awkward phase, and becoming antsy! Each day the playpen was becoming smaller and they were becoming eager to explore. By the beginning of May I was thinking on moving them to the coop, but a nervous mommy (my lovely wife) and a late spring cold snap had us keeping the girls inside until they were more than ready to face the big world outside.

Funny … it never occurred to us that the door to the spare room was too small to wheel the playpen outside to the run. We thought about bringing the girls (and Coq Au … you remember Coq Au. This is a blog about Coq Au) out there one by one. The cats were all in favor of this idea which only made herself and I all the more wary of ‘plan B’. Instead, we overrode democracy, out voted the cats, and instituted plan C. We got a large wicker laundry basket and a very large beach towel to cover it. I grabbed a nervous hen, my wife pulled back the towel, in went Ermatrude, and my wife covered the basket with the towel again. Next came Myrtle, but when she pulled back the towel, out popped Ermatrude. A few attempts, a few hens in, and it became a weird livestock version of ‘whack-a-mole’ with random little chicken heads popping out of the corners of the towel each time a hint of daylight was revealed and we had to time precisely how to pull back the towel, get a young pullet inside, and close it again before increasingly anxious chickens spilled out in all directions. This game became increasingly challenging with each addition. But, perseverance won the day and we got them into the basket. Coq Au Vin and all.

 

Out to the coop they went. We spent the day agonizing and fawning over every detail. Coq Au, although still but a young wisp of a cockerel, was already beginning to plot how to become a douche bag and how to wrest control of the situation from the obviously inferior humans (remember, we’ve dotted on him as much or more than any of the wee hens!)

 

I should note here that baby chicks are incredibly adorable. Roosters and hens are majestic in their somewhat frumpy way. But ‘teen’ pullets and cockerels are about the most awkward creatures that ever drew breath.

 

Never the less, they started showing their personalities. Hermione, the smallest hen, ran the show with the other girls. Hildegard liked to perch higher than everyone. Hortense like her ‘me’ time by herself. Myrtle could snatch and go with treats faster than anyone … bent toe and all. Coq Au Vin, in his quiet, watchful way, began to develop a sense of purpose in his black, black heart (which pumps not blood, like yours and mine, but a thick viscous oil of vitriolic hatred). He was beginning to decide that it was his personal mission to protect his girls at all costs and take utter contempt toward all things un-chicken! And he’s essentially right.

Well … so … we also noticed that they took to the habit of conducting morning meetings. It can not be told what they would discuss amongst themselves, they had a tendency to get real quiet as soon as anyone was in earshot. My wife did try to chair a couple of these morning meetings, but her authority, as recognized by the flock, was ceremonial at best and only lasted as long as treats could be distributed.

 

There would be more growing to do. And a lot of learning. The chickens had things to learn also!

 

Doting on Our Chicks and Building a Run.

Doting on our chicks and building a run.

If you’ve been reading along this far, you may realize that I mentioned that we were to get five hens and one roo, but provided eight names in all. Why? Because when we arrived to pick up the chicks there were eight in the wee hatchery at the farm. My wife looked at the chicks and then looked at me. Then she looked at the chicks and then again at me. So, I forked over the additional $11.98 and we ended up with eight baby chicks in all. The kind folks explained that the wee green patch under the chin of one of the chicks was an indication that one of them was, indeed, a roo. Then, they had me sign a legal document explaining that I was buying these birds as LIVESTOCK and not as pets … which is against the laws of nature, apparently. Not wanting to run afoul of the farm cops, or whatever state agency thinks that a reasonable person needs to be reminded that keeping a chicken in the house as a pet is a really dumb idea (and trust me, it is), I signed, paid, and herself and I were on our way with our little brood.

As for spoiling the new babies, I could list the things you should do to ensure healthy, happy babies, but that is all over the more educated chicken blogs so I’ll leave it to them to inform the curious. While we did the usual things such as measuring the feed, taking care of ‘pasty butt’, and playing with them (yes, that’s important too, they have no mother after all), the things we did above and beyond that include:

Playing Billie Holiday during daylight hours to sooth them and get them used to human voices even when we weren’t around.

Bringing in special treats that were age appropriate as they grew such as yogurt, bananas, later on a few meal worms, and the like.

Worrying over Myrtle’s bent toe (if caught right away, these can sometimes be fixed, but we felt Myrtle might have gone too long and trying to fix it may have made it worse … if a baby chick is debilitated due to this then the humane thing to do is put them down, but Myrtle was and is fine … bent toe and all).

Playing ‘baby chick tag’ … easy enough. After about a week, they are old enough for more treats. Toss in a blueberry. One chick will grab it and run and the others will give chase. It makes no difference if you toss in MORE blueberries … they will be ignored until the chase is sorted out.

Holding the baby chicks on your finger to teach them to perch and get used to being handled. None stood prouder on my finger than wee Coq Au Vin! (You remember Coq Au, this is a blog about Coq Au).

The cats took particular interest as well. I know their intentions were good and I am sure they would have liked to personally meet the baby chicks to ensure their health and welfare, but my wife and I thought the stress of it all would’ve been too much for our two felines and we didn’t want to expose them to all of that worry. So, Moonkie and Osha were relegated to staying OUT of that room, though they did often perch themselves at the door outside desperately trying to peer under the crack.

Quick side note concerning the naming of cats. Herself and I are TV junkies and one of our ‘stories’ we like to watch is Game of Thrones. With this in mind and realizing the importance of naming cats their full names are as follows …

The cat we chose:
Moonkitty Veronica Corningstone-Masters Gill Esq., the Doonk of Donkey, and the first of her name.

The abandoned cat that no one wanted who came to live with us:
Osha Street (‘street’ being the bastard name given to illegitimate births in the NJ part of the realm).

What you’re thinking is correct. My wife and I are not well.

Meanwhile, the clock was ticking on getting the run ready. I built the run myself, but part of making it secure is by digging a trench around it and burying the chicken wire a good half a foot underground to prevent digging predators. Yes, this is a real thing.

Here’s a short story about it from my distant past:
When I was small, my parents decided to get chickens and with five acres surrounded by MANY acres of protected woodlands this was not even an issue. They converted an old shed and obtained some chickens from the neighbors. They built and open top run and didn’t bury the wire. The run was tree covered, so threat from birds of prey was minimal. Well … one night a raccoon had gotten into the coop and the hens kicked up quite a fuss, as did Romeo (the old rooster we had). Now, I love and respect wild life … I respect life in all of its forms. But when there is a predator in the coop, they need to be dispatched. Raccoons are cute, funny, adorable little animals with as much right to live and follow their nature as any other living being … but when cornered in the back of your hen house, muzzle covered in the blood of the injured hen before him, they are a lot less adorable. He found himself on the wrong side of my father’s thirty aught six. The hen also needed to be put down and thus two lives were wasted.

Not wanting to repeat a scene like that if at all avoidable, I decided I needed to dig the damn trench and bury the wire. My day to day desk job means that doing this kind of physical labor could’ve been difficult and overly time consuming by myself with the chicks getting larger day by day … so plying them with the promise of beer and pizza, I bribed my close friends to come over with shovels and help. I love my friends and they turned out in grand fashion! Trench was dug and the run up in a day. Only thing left for me over the next few days was burying the cinder blocks placed in the trench on top of the buried wire and fashion a door to the coop. None of this is in anyway exciting, but never the less I am proud of my efforts, grateful to my friends, and to this day, years later, the run is still as solid as fort Knox. The photo is from summer 2016 and everything is still good to go. Anyone wanting the incredibly dull minutia of the details of its construction is welcome to ask in the comments.

The Chicks Arrive!

The chicks arrive!

After a winter of finding sources for Australorp chicks, purchasing associated supplies, and setting up a safe place in the house for chicks too little to be in a coop, we placed an order with a local farm for the darling little fluff balls: five hens and one roo. March of 2014 saw the coop delivered and we had obtained an old playpen to raise the babies in a spare room. Heat lamp, medicated chick feed, and appropriate treats. I also purchased the materials to build the run myself. Commercially available runs are more costly and not as secure as I would like, even in suburban NJ there are plenty of predators and pests. Raccoons, foxes, birds of prey, stray cats, an occasional stray dog, and possibly even coyote can all potentially invade, so I wanted security.

On April 4^th of 2014 the local farm contacted us to let us know that the babies had arrived. They were born on April 2^nd. My wife and I asked them to keep them safe until we could pick them up on the 6^th. We wanted to pick them up early and have a full day to get them safely home and acclimated to the playpen where they would be staying for four to six weeks until they were old enough to move out to the coop.

 

Now, the first mistake is naming your livestock. Bear in mind that we don’t intend to eat them, so we figured we’d name them anyway … and … like most first time chicken owners, they ended up with what some would call ‘old lady names’ Please don’t take offence if you are NOT an old lady, but happen to have one of these names! Our new flock as follows:
Mildred
Myrtle
Matilda
Hortense
Hildegard
Hermione
Ermatrude

And … the ‘hero’ of this blog … Coq Au Vin… our rooster. Don’t forget, this is a blog (mostly) about our rooster! All of the chickens have unique personalities and have developed additional nick names which you will read an out in excruciating detail ad nauseam as the blog progresses, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll often refer to our lil roo as ‘Coq Au’ or ‘Coco’ for short.