Dark Days.
The dark days of winter fell upon us. The cold and wet meant
more time inside for herself and I and less yard time for the flock. They were
able to get more sleep at night and egg production slowed just a little. Some
hens shut down entirely in the worst of the cold, but our hard working girls
kept right on laying, even if the rate was a little slower. When Yuletide
rolled around I bought a ‘flock block’ to put in their coop. This is a massive
hard packed seed treat thing, not unlike what others might put out for the wild
birds to peck at in winter when foraging is scarce. This one was maybe 25lbs!
This reason was more to stave off the boredom that comes from being ‘cooped up’
in bad weather (yeah, the expression actually comes from something). But, cold
temps be damned, our chickens love being out in their run all day, every day.
Down to temperatures in the teens they will still stand watch through the
bitter hours desperate for some sun. The only days they elected to stay in the
coop was on snow days (you can read my earlier post on the most recent snow day
to gather their unchanging opinion on the matter).
All the while I was mindful of my task to spare my roosters
life in spite of his best efforts to convince me that we should end it. These
are the things I discovered about his behavior over that winter. He gets a ‘look’
about him when he’s spoiling for a fight. When the early dawn took, and I had
to be ready for work before the sun was on high, I would go out to the coop,
open the peep door, and let them into the run. Often, he would dash out and
stand betwixt me and the girls and give me ‘the look’. I would never back down.
It was in HIS interest that he had to learn the true pecking order of the
household, and when he did take it in mind to charge, battle would be joined
and he would end up the worse for it. I am ever grateful that my morning coffee
was already strong about me so that I would be steeled for the morning task at
hand. But this I also discovered: After he would retreat with as much dignity
as he could muster, I would check the doings of the flock with as much time as
I could before the daily trek to the office. I often found his attacks were
because the flock had run short of feed. Sometimes because they ran short of
water. He was alerting me that things were amiss and I needed to address the
situation immediately. I was also learning to ‘chicken’ and discovered that it
was only natural that with less foraging the yard, they were going through feed
more quickly!
One day, they didn’t come out. I peered with bleary eyed
attention into the peep door and noticed that not only was their feeder empty,
they had knocked it over and it was blocking the exit. Still in my morning fog,
I reached in through the peep door to right it once again and that son of a
bitch bit me hard. Right on the meaty part of my hand between the thumb and the
fingers. I drew back in pain, realized that he had not drawn blood, but it was
to be a nasty bruise. I knew that once he tasted my blood, he would be itching
for a taste of my internal organs, so I was grateful it was only a bruise. I went
in through the large door amidst the now frantic girls and braved ‘the look’ he
gave, refilled the feed and went to work.
To this day I’m not quite sure if he knew it was MY hand, or
merely thought it was an intruder. Either way, I had come to realize that he
would lay down his life willingly to defend that flock.
If I were to give an accurate, though anecdotal assessment
of WHY he would choose to go on the attack on one morning over another I’d say
the break down was approximately 50% something is wrong, no food, or something
and 50% ‘you just piss me off in general and I’m coming for you.’
Turns out, a rooster has very complex emotions and he doesn’t
seem to give a fig what my complex emotions are.
So after the first of the year … mind you, I was NOT giving
up hope of a reconciliation … I called the local farm to discuss a replacement
rooster. The woman that owned the farm (this is where we bought the chicks in the
first place, so I had already had a few long discussions with her and found her
to be a wonderful conversationalist) and I talked about a great many things. We
talked about the lavender crossbreed rooster she had that she could part with,
we talked about what to do about learning how to butcher a bird if the time
came, we talked about the possibility of a zombie apocalypse … some folks are
very strange indeed … and by that, I mean myself most of all. I gravitate to
strange folks it seems. What struck me most of all was her confirmation that
this was indeed all very common behavior for most roosters and that the temperament
of any rooster was a crap shoot. She went on to describe her own ‘rooster-be-good’
stick that she carried with her whenever she attended to the doings of her own
flock.
My mind was torn on the matter, but still tending toward
sparing his life. I felt no great need to execute our first rooster if the
result could easily be a rooster that was just as bad or worse. Besides that, I
was getting the idea that he was committed to his job and at least half of the
efforts he made in proving his wrath upon my body was in the sole interest of his girls.
