Another day in the country
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
Chickens have been part of my Ramona experience ever since I was a wee little girl. Gathering eggs with Gram was my delight. So, it's no wonder that chickens were on the agenda once we returned to the country.
I'm still a novice at this chicken business and we've had several catastrophes in our hen houses, but we persevere. Several months ago I lost half of the flock in the Big House to the local fox. And then a few weeks ago I lost my last Top Knot girl, who I'd named Escada, to an out-of-town, chicken-killer dog who came calling.
In the Hen House there's always something new. The other day one of the cats got locked in with the chickens at night — that caused quite a stir. And then, Henny-Penny, sister #11 in the Big House, decided to set. I tried to talk her out of it. "Those eggs aren't even fertile," I told her. "You're wasting your time." She ignored me, so I called my neighbors.
"Henny Penny insists on setting," I told Deb. "Do you have fresh fertile eggs?" "You have a rooster, don't you?" I said to Tooltime Tim's sister, "I need some fertile eggs."
With four fresh eggs from the four hens in my back yard, and eight eggs from my neighbors, Henny Penny settled in to do her job — and wouldn't you know it we had the coldest nastiest weather imaginable during those 21 days of incubation. Only five eggs of her dozen possibilities were fertile and only three little chicks hatched out. "Better than nothing," we said.
So far, Henny Penny and her brood are in isolation and I've been trying to figure out which family of chickens to introduce them to. In the Big House, there's 10 hens — no rooster. Those girls are a pretty peaceful little community. They remind me sometimes of people rather than chickens. We have bossy hens, busy hens, drama queens — who carry on like they are being killed at anything unexpected — and timid souls who dip and bow when I come in the door, thinking I must be the head-of-household.
These are the girls who lived with Clifford, the rooster who became fox-food. Clifford was a sweetie. He was so gentle, so unusual, that I decided he must have been gay — that was why peace reigned in the Big House. After his death I introduced a little trouble-maker rooster from the other Coup, named Cocky-lock. "This is your last chance," I told him, "be good to these girls." He wasn't.
Cocky-lock was a tyrant. He told stories to those hens and had them scared to death. He never gave them a minute's peace — chasing them from one end of the yard to the other. He was a wife-beater and when I saw the bloody evidence on one of my poor hens, Cocky-lock met his maker!
Black-Bart, my handsome rooster who lives with four of his hatchlings in The Coup, has grown into a respectable guy. Without competition, he's settled down to doing what roosters do — protect and perpetuate. When nice weather came, and I started letting the chickens out in the afternoon to stretch their legs, I wondered what these two flocks of chickens might do if they met at the edge of the road — the 10 girls from the Big House on the south side and Bart and his family of four on the north. Yesterday, I found out.
Bart's hens paid no attention to the flock across the street. Black-Bart was another story. He started crowing, paced in the ditch, started across the road, called to his hens to follow (they wouldn't) and when they headed back to their Coup, he headed across the road like an errant husband on the prowl — I'm not kidding, he looked guilty. I told my sister that he reminded me of a polygamist at a high school prom — crowing and strutting and doing the wing-dance to impress the girls — like to wore himself to a frazzle.
I wondered what he'd do when night came. Would Bart try and lead his hens to the Promised Land? Would he go in with this bigger flock of hens? He was torn. He stayed out later than usual — his hens were all in The Coup and he was still pacing across the street, trying to decide. Finally he did the right thing and came home. Needless to say, Bart's anxious to get out these days and he heads straight across the road to check on his new-found harem.
In the country, it's just another day, but in the spring, even poultry passion is entertaining.
