Tails and Tidings: Chicken In

You might be familiar with the ups and downs in our chicken-keeping saga. A lot has happened on that front lately, so I think we're due for a little update.

We started with four chicks, two of whom were roosters, so we had to part ways. That left us with Lenore and Hot Sauce, and we immediately welcomed Pippi, the Barred Rock.

At this time, we also pre-ordered three started pullets of rare breeds. That's right, fancy chickens.

It was only a matter of time. We picked them up a couple of weeks ago, and have been getting acquainted.

From left to right, they are a Gold-Laced Wyandotte, a Dark Rhode Island Red, and a Blue Wyandotte; Priscilla, Cholula, and Vilma, respectively. So far, they look girly, but I have said that in the past. I'm trying to get better at spotting rooster saddle feathers and quickly-developing combs. Until we're sure they're staying, we're holding on loosely. That is to say, with love, If you crow, you gots to go.*

*I just now made that up, and it will be one of the BU mottos until we move to enough land where crowing will not be a deal-breaker.

Right now, they live under what used to be our kitchen table. Cozy! They spend their days in a little cage on the lawn, and their nights under the new coop, which brings me to my next little update: Please imagine a tall lovely lady in an evening gown, flashing a smile as she walks backward, gracefully lifting her arms and splaying bejeweled, manicured, jazz-hands.

A Brand New Coop! Fully insulated! Ventilated! Made from scrap materials, without a plan! With a removable floor, for easy cleaning! Let's hear it for Geza! Can you spot the kitchen table in that marvel of Hungarian Design and Engineering? It's in there! I attached wire mesh to the bottom, and Geza outfitted it with a door, so there's a lower level for Cholula, Vilma and Priscilla. We thought it best to keep them separated from the big hens*, who might get mean.

*From left to right, Lenore, Pippi, and Hot Sauce.

And maybe they're allowed to be mean, as they are delivering big hard eggs on a daily basis. I'll overlook a little crankiness in exchange for this.

That's right. Double Yolker, all the way. This is what it's all about. And there have been several of these. The single yolkers are pretty awe-inspiring too.

While we were waiting for eggs, our chickens gave us something else, a little lesson in "behavior loops"; working with others is all about those little functions of our attention spans in which we all operate. It's hard to explain, but easy to illustrate. You know, it's not all smug smiles and egg cups here at the BU. Sometimes, things go awry.

Say your goat prys your chicken gate open with her face, and your chickens end up in your barn, where they find an open door, and wander into your neighbor's yard. You know, just for an example. What do you do?

Well, if you were me, several months ago, you would break into a cold sweat and start yelling for people to come help you. This, just before launching into a panicked toddle, with out-stretched arms. You would notice that chickens possess a magical ability to glide just out of reach every time you swoop your big primate paws into the surrounding bushes. Did I mention the mocking laughter of the neighbor children? You hear that.

This is why I am glad I married a Chicken Whisperer.

Geza does a lot of the daily chicken duties and is learning, and teaching all of us (me), to chill out. Just calm down. If you chase the chicken, it starts running and you can do that all day, stupid.

Sorry, but you are stupid if a chicken is leading you around in circles in your yard.

If you stay cool, and wait for a second, the chicken kind of forgets that it was locked in an Eternal Struggle for Freedom, and goes back to looking for something shiny to peck at. Sometimes, at this moment, it is possible to catch the chicken. Other times, a person might be surprised to find the chicken walks back to them and sometimes struts right into the place it is expected to go. Once the battle dynamic is no more, they can go any which way. The chickens end up where they need to be, to be safe, without cursing injured humans and squawking birds.

I've decided that this is a valuable lesson, even if you never see a chicken for the rest of your life. Sometimes a struggle can take on a life of its own, and it won't be resolved unless one of the creatures involved can understand that and maybe even relinquish the moment. Let go. The end result becomes an open situation, with a greater number of possible outcomes. Success might become so much more likely that it just happens on its own, or maybe you have to wait that loop out and try again a little later. Even if it takes a while for things to happen as you planned, at least the neighbor children aren't laughing at you, and isn't that a good thing? Let them go back to their cable television.

Tails and Tidings: Regrets, I Can't Really Think of Any

It was with a heavy heart that we said good-bye to Cora and Candy yesterday. A few weeks ago, Cora crowed, loudly, and in the most roostery fashion. Then Candy. And then they both just kept crowing and growing the kind of feathers and features that only roosters have. A quick email to the Urban Farm Store, with a couple of attached pictures, confirmed that they are males. As backyard chickeneers, we had no choice but to send them packing. We can't have cock-a-doodle-doos, and we can't have fertilized eggs, so it was time to say farewell.

Do I sound sad? I am, sort of. I mean, we all wish they were hens. There's that. We would have loved for our false impressions of these birds to be..not false. Is it ever easy to say good-bye to someone you love? Probably not.

Still, we're trying to be pretend farmer types here, and it wouldn't do to get too mopey over the transient nature of a life lived among many other living things. In the immortal words of MC Lyte, "No one on earth is promised tomorrow. Believe that!"

The reality always was that we had two little roosters in the making. We bought them, brought them home, named them, fed them, loved them, and learned from them. We were ignorant of a reality, and that's all that has changed in the last few days. Knowing their gender didn't make me love Cora and Candy less, but it made me realize that what I thought might be many years with them was actually going to be just a few months. So, I thought something was true, and it turns out it wasn't. Something else was true.

I hope Candy and, now, Corey had what a cockerel* thinks of as a good time during their stint at Backyard University. Having to send them on their way at this point isn't what we planned, but "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans." John Lennon said that. And how can one regret life? I really have to rack my brain and my heart and my soul to find something resembling regret for anything in my life, and I have trouble finding it.

*What you call a chick that won't ever give you any eggs, but instead will make lots of noise and grow up to pick fights with your children.

Don't get me wrong. There are so many things that I Would Do Differently If I Knew Then What I Know Now. Does that count as regret? To me, it doesn't because I think regret sounds like a certainty. If I go around now, not knowing what I'm doing, what makes me think I can be so sure I know what I should have done instead? Now I know that we bought two roosters. If I had known their gender 14 weeks ago, I wouldn't have bought them, but what might I have done instead? Would that have been so great? I can't say for sure.

Take a look at their faces. Do they look sad, or stoic?* Do they look like the kind of people who cry over crowing pullets (or would have blogged about it?) That man's eyes are punk rock, yelling "Bring it!" at life. The woman is ever vigilant, checking the horizon for predators. They know what most of us don't.

Don't expect me to tell you what it is they know, as I come from suburbs and shopping malls, so I'm part of the rest of us that doesn't know what they know. I never faced starvation. As a wannabe fauxrmer, I can't help but feel silly about the little ups and downs of Backyard University. Yay! We grew a pumpkin! (hopefully, in a couple of months) Look! An egg! (hopefully, in a couple of months) But if there's a late frost, or a blight, or a rooster, we have nothing but a moment of feeling bummed out. We don't have to subsist on boiled sawdust and tears, like the couple in the painting.

*Stoic is what wise people feel instead of sad.

No, the biggest loss we have to mourn is our opinion of The Urban Farm Store. They boast a 90% accuracy rate in chick sexing.* Maybe we were just unlucky, but we could have gotten a 50/50 gender split by picking chicks on a tossed coin. On the website, they also say they can take back a rooster, should you find yourself with one, but they offer no refunds. Fine, we knew that going in, so I didn't really expect one. They were easy to contact and offered to take the roosters back right away, so on that front they followed through, but I was kind of hoping for a little something more. Something like, "Oh, we sold you four chicks and only two of them were keepable? Wow. Sorry, here's a bag of feed, or another chick, or a break on the price of a $20 pullet. Nope. Nothing. No refunds, no nothing.

*What you call it when you figure out whether your chick is really a dude or not.

After returning Candy (read on to find out what happened to the Chicken Formerly Known As Cora), I walked around the store, peeking in the brooders at the fluffy puffs of cute cheepy love that are chicks, and felt a little mad at the store. I heard excited new customers picking their breeds and I wanted to warn them. I read the description cards about which breeds were good layers and I thought of what terrible layers roosters are, of any breed. What incentive does the Urban Farm Store have to make sure their chicks really are girls? In a little yard outside the store, they sell pullets (teenage girl chickens) for a whopping $20 apiece, so if anything, they can hope for a little extra money if they sell boy chicks with reckless abandon. Sure, we'll take your rooster back, now just have a stroll to the back of the store and pick an over-priced pullet to fill that void in your flock. It'd be a kicker to find out if they end up getting money for the roosters somewhere else. Thanks for raising our meat birds, suckers!

When I first called them to order my chicks, I was planning to play it safe. I knew the closest thing to a sure bet was a sex-link chicken, meaning their gender is linked to their markings, so it's easier to distinguish the she-chickens from the beginning.The store employee who took my order asked why I was ordering four Black Stars*. He recommended getting four different breeds. I admit, I didn't take much convincing, because I really wanted to see what the other breeds were all about. I trusted their chick sexing skills and decided to go for it. We all know how that went.

* What you call a Black Sex Link to avoid saying the s-e-x word.

Enough brooding! That's an inside joke and you'd have to be a chickenhead to get it. The day of pondering regret and roosters and sloppy business practices ended in a big pretty bright place known as Casa de Crowe.

This is Tawnya, and she swooped in to save the day with a charitable chicken trade offer. She said she could give a home to one of our cockerels, and we could even have one of her pullets to boot! Can I get three cheers for this awesome mom of three delightful brilliant homeschooled li'l Crowes? Three cheers for them too, while we're at it! The only catch is, Corey has to behave himself. Casa de Crowe does not tolerate roosters behaving badly and Corey needs to toe the line, or else. Yes. That. This is farm rules. You gots to mind your manners, or you gets it.

When Corey was introduced to the Crowe flock of Barred Rock pullets, he put on the most spectacular rooster show, flaring his neck feathers and getting right in on the the pecking order decision committee. He pecked and was pecked. It was all very natural. Tawnya said he settled in later and seems happy now.

Speaking of settling in, we are getting acquainted with Pippi, the Barred Rock pullet we gained in the trade. She was the littlest one of her flock and is quick! I put her in a box to take her home and she popped out before I could shut the lid! Tawnya quickly and firmly grasped her tail feathers and gently held down her lower back (like the lady in the painting above probably did a thousand times) and Pippi settled down immediately. She's in her yard with Lenore and Hot Sauce, and they have also been establishing their pecking order, albeit in a much less showy fashion.

Her markings are so similar to Lenore's, just a little more pronounced. She looks like a tiny intense version of Lenore. I watched Lenore, Pippi and Hot Sauce for a minute. They looked different than the sight I'm used to seeing. All dark colors, no more brightness of the boys. Yet, in the real world of reality, we gained a hen today. There used to be four chickens, and now there are three, but we ended up with more hens. I'll take that, and I'll be thankful for the good people in the world, like Tawnya.