Prologue: Which Bathroom is He Supposed to Use?

Prologue: Which bathroom is he supposed to use?

Things were going very well. Each minor crisis was met with a renewed vigor, the flock spent another summer without incident, Lagertha was becoming almost as large as the fully grown birds, and Coq Au Vin and had settled into a workable routine with each other. We avoided each other for the most part with a distanced mutual respect and once every two weeks or so he decided that life would not be complete unless I delivered to him a good booting. You could tell in the days leading up to it because he would posture in front of me and this will be difficult to describe. When chickens forage around, they are bent over, searching the ground for morsels, and pick up this or that tasty bug, treat, cracked corn, or whatever. They look intense, but serene. Coq Au rarely forages, but when he does, he also looks intent and serene. As I’ve described before, he usually doesn’t eat what he finds, but calls a girl over and gives the treat to her. Sometimes it is only out of a sense of his inner altruism, sometimes he launches into his weird stiff-legged mating dance. But on the occasions where he is posturing for a fight, he bends down with the same intensity but with an underlying seething hated that causes his movements to almost tremble. He’ll pick up something useless like a piece of straw and put it back down with equal muscular tension. As he does this he grumbles under his breath: “I’m gonna pick up THIS piece of straw … and now I’m gonna put it over HERE! Then I’m gonna pick up THIS piece and put it over THERE! THAT’LL show YOU who’s the *REAL* boss of THIS yard!” … and on and on. That’s how I know a flurry of talons and feathers is only a day or so away and a good booting is in order. On those days he pleads with me. “Please, sir … oh please. My life can not be complete on this day unless I’ve had a sound kicking!” and I am forced to oblige.

Thus, life went on in this way but the nature of the flock was about to be drastically changed, and for a long time to come.

While watching the flock foraging the yard one fine autumn day, I took special interest in how lil Lagertha had grown.

“She’s magnificent,” I thought. “Just look how much greener the beetle-sheen is on her black feathers than the older girls! Her legs and tail feathers are becoming stunningly long too, and … ah crap.”

Disheartened, I turned houseward to ignore the issue I had discovered with the deep, deep wish that I was wrong and that it would just simply go away if I closed my eyes hard enough. My respite was short, though.

The following day, herself and I were out in the yard to make the decisions on early fall activities. What plants needed to be pulled, what summer junk needed to be tossed or put away, etc. The flock was once again out foraging and basking in the early autumn sun. My wife outwardly began the same conversation to me that I had with myself only a day before. I had said nothing to her, she was musing the same way I had been.

“Look at how beautiful Lagertha’s tail is and how tall she’s getting!”

“That’s because ‘she’s’ a rooster, my love.”

“Ah crap!” my lovely bride said in complete echo to the tone that played in my head yesterday.

With our mutual discovery of the same problem, I could no longer keep myself in denial. She had just seen the same thing I had seen and confirmed all of my suspicions and fears.

We made no decisions that day except to change her name from “Lagertha” to “Floki” (a tricky, enigmatic character from the same Vikings program that she and I were enjoying from which we had chosen the name “Lagertha”.

Little did I realize at that time just what an epic struggle was about to befall our household. This was the harbinger akin to the mythic tales of old that belie a story of Arthurian proportions.

Of Rolaids and KY Jelly.

Of Rolaids and KY Jelly

Everyone needs help sometimes. Even a strong leader can fall ill to some ailment large or small and be brought low for a time. A little help, a little recuperation, and a renewed attitude on life can do wonders.

One day, I walked out to the run to see the flock and tend to their needs. By and large, chickens are a lot hardier than they look and if properly fed and housed, they pretty much take care of themselves. Never the less, issues do arise from time to time and keeping a careful eye helps prevent minor issues from becoming major catastrophes.

Chickens have their own social structure and their own laws for dealing with issues. To the casual outside observer, trouble is usually responded to by hens fleeing for cover in all directions. While this is at least partially true, their social structure also gives the flock order and each hen plays a part. But if a hen is sick or injured, they will keep a distance from the others. Chickens, on their own, have no doctors. A sick or injured hen can put the whole flock at risk so they can have a natural tendency to pick on an injured hen, or chase away an ill hen. A sick or injured hen will also seek her own company away from the flock for these same reasons.

For reasons that weren’t immediately apparent, the alpha female, Hermione (also the smallest hen, oddly enough) was standing fairly still away from the rest of the flock. She is also Coq Au’s favorite girl so it was quite odd that neither he nor the rest of the girls were paying her any mind at all. Nor was she seeking their company. She is usually in the thick of things laying down the law to the other girls and strutting pridefully around, but today she seemed somewhat sullen. She was standing kind of funny too.

I opened the run to let the girls out into the yard and she was reluctant to come out, but she did. I threw down some treats and the girls clamored over each other to get them, but she didn’t come near. I threw some in her direction and noted that she took a passing interest and did eat some. If she’s not off her food, then it can’t be too bad, but I watched.

Hens have a very distinctive shape to their bodies. Especially good layers, and Hermione was one of the best. She lays large eggs for a girl of her slight frame, but her shape was all off. The way she stood, the way she walked, it was almost penguin-like. By now, I had read and reread enough of the common chicken ailments to know that she was probably ‘egg bound’.

'Egg bound' is where an egg is stuck in the hen’s laying tract and can be anywhere from uncomfortable to downright painful for her. And … as per usual … if not handled properly … can be fatal. An egg bound hen can’t walk right, stand right, sleep right, or eat right and her laying tract can continue to become backed up. I spent the next half an hour trying to catch her without injuring her or attracting too much attention from an angry rooster and thus becoming injured myself! She was not at her best and disinclined to bunch up with the rest of the girls so a little gentle patience won the day and I caught her. She was terrified when I out the blanket over her, but that calmed her quite a bit. I brought her into the house, washed my hands, gently held her on her back in the bath tub and gently, very gently, probed her cloaca. Sure enough, there was an egg in there and for whatever the reason, she was having trouble laying it.

I released her back outside and went off to consult the mystic chicken gurus of the interwebs whose dread knowledge is the answer to all questions great and small and reviewed the possible outcomes. The best outcome was that she would pass the egg herself in a few hours to a day, but there were great cautions against just letting it go. The worst case was that she would continue to be bound up and die. There was NO WAY I was going to allow that to happen to our little devil-may-care punk rock girl! The middle ground would be to puncture the egg and thus let it break. While this would reduce the size and allow it to pass, extracting the shells would need to be done with practically surgical precision or they may injure the soft internal tissue of the hen and thus put her at great risk. This being my first go around with an egg bound hen, I was NOT going to go that route!

I decided that she would have to pass the egg herself, but that there were things to do to help her and I was willing to do them! I ran out to the store for some Rolaids and KY lubricant. I also called my wife and let her know what was going on so that she didn’t question why there was a chicken in the house. Oh crap … I let her go outside and would have to catch her again.

After a second half an hour with a more wary hen, I had her under the towel again. She was scared again, but calm. I brought her back into the bathroom and filled the sink with warm water. The experts explained that one of the causes could be stress and soothing the bird in a warm bath would help her tension relax. Who knew that chickens got stressed? Who knew they like warm baths? Well, no one explained this to Hermione because she had no interest in sitting down in the warm water. She stubbornly stood in the sink without letting her bottom come NEAR the water.

While this battle of wills played out in slow motion, I took a couple of Rolaids and broke them into small pieces. You see, one of the causes for being egg bound could be lack of calcium, and anyway, the extra calcium carbonate would stimulate the egg laying process. What the geniuses of the web failed to mention was how to get a stubborn hen to TAKE the pieces of Rolaids. So there I was. A confused hen standing in a sink full of warm water staring blankly at me while I offered her some antacids. You can’t make this stuff up.

Added stress be damned, a grasped her and got a few pieces into her beak. She was going to get better whether she wanted to or not and the union rep was not around for her to lodge a formal complaint! Next came the ‘fun’ part.

As per the best advice of the knowledgeable experts, I held poor little Hermione on her back again in the bathtub while I gently (and I do mean gently) probed her cloaca with a finger full of KY. Man, the egg was so near the surface and it was indeed large. Her vent did look red and swollen from the effort of trying to lay this monster that I felt like the KY would, in fact, do some good, but if anyone had told me a year ago that I’d be in my bathroom with a finger lodged a knuckle or two deep into the underside of a live hen, I’d have said that would have been a very unlikely scenario. But … here we were, Hermione and I, at the moment of a trust bond in our familial relationship.

After I felt like that spread as much personal lubricant around the affected area as I could and had gotten as many pieces of Rolaids into her as she was willing to take, I set her down on a soft pillow in a blanket with a warm towel over her so she could relax and de-stress. An hour later I repeated my failed attempt to give her a soothing soak and out her back to rest. An hour after that, herself came home.

“Where’s the poor baby!”

I gently shushed her and took her into the bathroom for a peek. After she was sure our little leader of the flock was resting comfortably, I explained what I had done so far and that soaking for fifteen minutes each hour was recommended, but that I was having trouble with that. With soak time approaching, my wife helped me. She held Hermione by the body, while I folded her legs in a bit and we got her to make contact with the water. We had to hold her in place with a hand on her back, as she remained perpetually unconvinced that a soak was a good thing. We were going to repeat the process through the evening until she laid her egg, hopefully by morning, but her time away from the flock was cut short.

At some point, as evening approached, even though the lights in the bathroom were off to keep her calm and allow her to rest, she decided it was her new mission in life to kill the strange hen she encountered in the mirror. That hen didn’t look like anyone she knew and it didn’t smell like … well … it didn’t smell like anyone at all! So, she or her, one of them had to go!

With this new ruckus, we knew her time at the spa had come to an end. We were a little fearful of returning her to the flock, she was still egg bound, and now having been away from the flock for hours, the others might treat her with suspicion and pick on her. Fortunately, it was getting dark and the hens were looking to go to bed, so once they were in the coop, we placed her gently in one of the nesting boxes and hoped for the best.

I’ll never know if it was the calcium carbonate, the KY, the soak, or just time, but next day she passed the egg. With crisis narrowly averted, the flock returned to normal and Hermione resumed her place as the top girl, although Coq Au let her rest for a few days before resuming his particular brand of attention to her. At least he had that much class.

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!

Chicken Network Saves The Day.

Chicken Network Saves the Day

In my last post I mentioned that herself and I have ‘kept tabs’ on some friends and acquaintances who also keep chickens … or were seriously thinking about it … for the purposes of gifting spare hens, trading stock, and getting practical advice from direct sources, rather than relying on the gurus of the interwebs. Our own little ‘chicken network’ so to speak. Little did we know we’d be using it so soon and for reasons completely unrelated to our own birds!

There are times when I feel that my wife and I over think and over analyze before taking on a project, and honestly, chickens are pretty easy to raise. So much so that they are considered a ‘gateway’ livestock amongst the homesteader types. Well … it turns out there are reasons I am glad we over think these things!

When we had purchased our first chicks, and by that time had researched every aspect we could ad nauseam, I was surprised to discover that we had to sign a form stating that they were not pets and we were required to take a minimum of a half a dozen. You can read about it in an earlier blog post. There are reasons that various towns do this! It is the height of foolishness to buy a cute baby chick as an Easter gift for a child! It is also a bad idea to attempt to keep chickens in the house, they are messy, loud, and destructive (even more so than our two cats and our pig). By requiring a purchase of a half a dozen or more and signing a form it helps reduce impulse buys. Also, there are several classifications of chicks a person can buy at the feed store in the spring. Most notably, sexed and unsexed. Also, laying hens or meat birds. You should really know what you are doing and make decisions about what kind of chickens you are going to buy before stepping in. I know it is hard to resist the peeping little fluff balls under the heat lamp, but you must not buy on impulse! Now, we have a fully functional coop and run and know what we’re doing, so if my wife came home with a couple of chicks, I would be mildly upset over the impulse, but we are equipped to deal with them.

My wife has an acquaintance in the Jersey City/Bayonne area of NJ. For those of you not familiar with this area it is a very urban section of NJ right across the river from NYC. Sure, it is houses and duplexes, but all with tiny, tiny yards if they have yards at all, close neighbors, and all the appropriate city ordinances. My wife’s friend is an animal lover with a huge heart who basically lives on her own in such a house. Although not in daily contact with my wife, she would keep up with the posts on Facebook.

My wife got a call from her one day out of the blue. She was upset and the city was going to fine her if she didn’t get rid of her chickens.

WHAT CHICKENS???

My wife called me at work and told me that her friend had eight chickens that needed a home and what could we do about it? I lovingly told her that it would have to be a discussion for when I got home. Once I arrived home I plied her with the detailed questions of what happened, what was the back story, what were her expectations, and every aspect I could consider to get ahold of the situation.

Turns out … it was something like this. Her friend had apparently wandered into a feed store in late spring. Most of the baby chicks they had were sold and only a few left … now getting onto a week old, the feed store would have to put them down. She had scooped up the eight unsexed chickens of various breeds, purchased a heat lamp and feed, and took them home. She had intended to put a small coop in her tiny, tiny yard and keep the chickens. Now, about five weeks later, she still had no coop, the chickens were four roosters and four hens, some bantam, some full size. One rooster had turned feisty so she locked him in the bathroom, and the neighbors had complained to the city so she was ordered to remove the illegal livestock. That … is the situation that befell us.

Well, upon hearing the initial story, I was reluctant to take a non-heritage bird into our flock, but figured a hen or two extra would be no matter and we’d adopt out the rest via the chicken network. But with four roosters??? If we took a hen or two for ourselves, we’d be making bad chicken math even worse. So, we made the calls, posted the pictures that her friend had sent us (beautiful birds!) and tried to convince anyone to take eight birds including FOUR ROOSTERS.

 

Nearly all of our contacts said no. They either had too many roosters, thank you very much, or lived in a town that allowed them to have chickens but no to roosters.

But then we reached out to Bruce.

I briefly described Bruce in my last post, but let me go just a little farther. As I had said, he is a tall, burly man that comes from old farming folk. Within his large, somewhat gruff appearance dwells the heart of a man truly at one with nature. He’s an animal lover, but also with the old school farm sensibilities that allow him to deal with animals on their level, rather than anthropomorphizing them into ‘little furry people’. When my wife and I had been around to visit him a season before we discussed with him the possibility that he may want to start his own flock and that we’d be glad to help. And so, when we called on him over this issue we discovered that his old beloved dog, who was of great age, had passed on and it grieved him sore. He was happy to have this new project full of life and agreed to take the birds.

We coordinated the exchange where my wife’s friend would come by with the adolescent flock and Bruce would pick them up. Once my wife’s friend saw the gentle soul of the tall man before her she knew her babies would be in good hands.

Chicken network came through, TWO friends were helped along the way, and eight young chickens had a hope of a good life on the farm. My wife and I were most pleased.

Epilogue: Bruce is also a bit of a photographer and we’ve had a chance to see the chickens grow along the way. Being from farm stock, he has his own chicken network and was able to trade one rooster for two hens that helped balance his own chicken math. We’ll check in with Bruce again a little farther down the road!

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.

Dental Plan.

Dental Plan.

With the situation still unresolved over Coq Au, winter broke and spring came gently to the land. The flock was fast approaching one year old and everything (except what to do about the angry rooster!) was running smoothly.

Then … one day … the eggs stopped. The feed was right, they had treats, forage, oyster shells … but the daily egg count dwindled off from about five eggs a day to one egg every other day.

I marched into that run, rooster be damned, and demanded an explanation from Matilda (the flock’s union rep). Among the hens, Hermione is the alpha, a fiery little girl that would remind you of many of Joe Pesci’s characters. Although recognized as their de facto leader after Coq Au, the flock thought she was a little too hot headed herself to enter into negotiations of a high level and yet manage to keep her cool, so they elected Matilda to be the union’s liaison with upper management.

Anyway, I marched in there and demanded an explanation about the egg situation.

“We’re on strike.” She plainly explained.

“On STRIKE??!!” I quipped, “Why on EARTH would you go on strike?”

“We want a dental plan.” Matilda calmly intoned.

“You understand that you don’t even have teeth, right?” I tried to rationalize to her.

“No matter, we work pretty hard and feel we deserve some benefits.” She stated.

“Do you even know what a dental plan is?” I asked

“Don’t you oppress me, I’m a respected member of the flock and it’s high time we sorted out some worker’s rights around here.” She calmly demanded.

She was without threat and without malice, so I entered into tough negotiations with her. After several hours of hard fought compromise it was decided that they would get a gold level premium dental plan and that the mealworms to cracked corn ratio would be improved. Naturally, chickens don’t have teeth, so I only TOLD them I was getting a dental plan for them. Nor can they read, so when I showed Matilda the ‘policy’ I had obtained, she peered at it with pretend intensity … said ‘hmmm’ several times and finally ended with ‘Very good, everything looks in order.’

Turns out, that when chickens are molting, not only will they stop laying eggs during their molt, they will also get some pretty strange ideas in their heads.

“Dental plan” indeed. I figure the neighbor’s Australian Shepherd put that idea into their heads to sow discord. Bastard.

After some time, whether it was the end of their molt, or the fact that they did notice an improvement in the mealworms ratio, they started laying again. Coq Au and I had continued our mutual stance of armed neutrality through the whole crisis, each of us realizing that bigger things were at stake than our petty squabble.

Come tax time, in an effort to mitigate the increased cost of treats due to a higher percentage of mealworms, I asked my accountant if I could declare the flock as dependents. He blithely replied “Get me their social security numbers and we’ll talk.”

On a side note …

Today, as I was in the kitchen, window open on a rare day of temps in the 60’s in Feb. I heard a ruckus on the porch. I went outside quickly and hens went fleeing off of the porch. “What was that ruckus?” I demanded. “What ruckus?” They said. “I distinctly heard a ruckus!” I replied. “Can you describe the Ruckus?” they asked. At this point, I felt a fool for arguing with chickens who apparently had been raised up with the same level of sarcasm as every other NJ resident. I don’t know what they were up to, but I suspect they were trying to get to the mealworms can on the potting table. Also … I must remember to cut the cable to their TV … no more old movies for them. Take THAT chicken union!

Dark Days.

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.