A Plethora of Roosters

Amazingly enough, during the last hatch of some 30 chicks (yes, the bird count is somewhere around 70, who said rabbits were so prolific?) I did only result in about 4 or 5 roosters. Of the half dozen roosters I have a very large Black Giant who must be eating more than his share of the feed and has thus grown much larger than the rest of the flock earning him a nickname of "Triple Wide". We laughingly observed that Triple Wide fills up our chicken house openings which are a generous size of 12 inches by 12 inches. Big rooster. I mention Triple Wide only because my husband has actually found people who want to "stud him out" for breeding. I laughed when he told me they were only interested in breeding my largest Black Giant rooster. That would be Triple Wide. The others being more gawky in stature.

As it so happened my son's girlfriend, who runs a dog agility training class, was on her way to class one evening, pulled into the drive of the ranch where she teaches, where she saw a box in the driveway. The ranch being in a rural area and the driveway known to lead to the facility, she was accustomed to people dropping off unwanted puppies and kittens and sought to rescue the creatures before getting out and getting run over on the road. ( I should mention she had been up to our house several times admiring our flock(s) of chickens and teasingly told my son she wanted one someday. I rolled my eyes because although my son has a small house (800 sf) his yard is large but they already have 3 dogs and a cat and she had just moved in a year ago, when he was living alone with no animals.) Bringing the box into the light of her car she saw that the creature was a chicken and brought it home to "show him". The chicken turned out to be a hen and productive one at that supplying them daily with one egg. The hen, whom they named Hennesy, was very comfortable around the dogs and cat and oftentimes tried to sneak into the house scrabbling with slippery chicken feet to get through the mud room and zooming in like a crack addict on the dry cat food which she ate with zealousness until my son or his girlfriend chasing after her managed to pry her away from the dish. Cat food became her means of being trained, but not broken of making a mad dash every chance she was given to run for the dish. She has since learned how to squat for petting and jump onto a hand and off to do a chicken version of "high five". My son would rather see a wing in the air five but the chicken is having difficulty with the concept. It was thought that Hennessy would do well to have a "companion" chicken but rather than browsing my overabundance of ready to hand stock, it was decided to purchase a chick. Not just any chick but a fancy, silky chick. One of my plain jane chicks was borrowed to keep the new chick company, a small black giant chick. And thus with one little white chick and one little black chick my son named the black one "Spy" since they looked like the MAD comic rendition of Spy vs. Spy. The white one had been named "Pippy" for her "long stockings" of white feathers.

I imagine at this point that you are asking yourself what this has to do with roosters? While a feed store makes every effort to assure that chicks are "sexed" and separated correctly, it recently became apparent that "Pippy" was a "Pip" after he developed an aversion to humping dog toys before his vocal chords could betray that rhetorical indication of the male chicken. "Spy" had since been returned to us and re-entered into our clutch of chickens. I offered to give her back but there was reluctance because a Silky was the preferred fowl of choice and mine were not. Some hinting was made that if Pip kept his beak closed (and didn't raise a fuss in the neighborhood) there would be no need to send him to us. But we are doubtful the bird will be able to help but crow once he's fully matured.

The story is made more comical because the same thing happened to another friend who had fallen in love with a white silky and purchased it to replace a lost bird. She also realized that what she had been told was girl, actually had a preference for girls and a crow to go with it. We were approached to determine if we were interested. Currently we have Bantam mix birds, Americanas, and Black Giants. With two white Silky roosters it would be a horrible thing to have to add White Silky hens to the mix. Of course we have Giant Bantams and Americana Giants mixed in the fray as well. I'm told the eggs of the Americana Giants will probably be Army drab green.

I should mention that on one visit, my son, whose dog accidentally killed my one and only Rhode Island hen (the mate had been eaten by coyotes a few months back) bought me two Rhode Island chicks for Mother's Day after having acquired Hennessy and appreciating her friendly and funny nature, not realizing that I had a bountiful harvest that erupted from under bushes and wood piles, and snuck into chicken coops at night. I did thank him with much chagrin and am now watching my babies reach maturity once again.

Three Black Giant roosters, one Americana rooster, three mixed Bantam/Americana roosters, and somewhere out in limbo the possibility of two white Silky roosters.

Wile E. Coyote

Introduction: My husband and I were both born and raised in suburbia. We raised our son in suburbia. As we approached midlife we decided to slow our pace down by moving to the country. We’ve had a goat, but it was stolen. We are learning how to raise chickens and sharing the laughter of the learning process. This is our latest misadventure.

Wile E. Coyote

I walk around shell-shocked.

Three weeks ago I lost my 14-pound Black Jersey Giant rooster, Elvis, to a daylight attack by coyote, fox, or dog (not mine). That morning I had just sold at auction four roosters of Bantam mixes that I didn't want. I was now down to one rooster. I looked at my flock of 22 Black Giant hens that were to be bred to Elvis and wanted to cry. My remaining rooster was a hen-pecked, Americana mix that had a tail protruding from his plucked rump resembling an old feather duster. I sighed. I wanted Elvis…but so did the wildlife.

It being August, most hatcheries were stopping their shipments of baby birds. I found one hatchery in Missouri who was still shipping in what is called "Straight Run" or "non-sexed" assortments. This means a mix of unspecified proportions of male and female. But they called back within a day and said "no more this year".

What was I going to do with 22 Black Jersey Giant hens? Besides sell their eggs?

I wanted a rooster, but everyone was settling in for the winter and not really selling their stock or what they had, had already been sold. I found a hatchery in Florida that was auctioning off a batch of 25 straight run Black Jersey Giant chicks. Going directly to the seller I ordered a batch and was notified they would email me when the order was shipped. I looked at my yard full of chickens and asked myself, “What am I going to do with 25 more chickens?” Buyer’s remorse was setting in.

On the following Monday we received a phone call telling us that a shipment of chicks was waiting for us at the post office. No email had been sent. We were in some shock. We already had some 2 month old Australorps in the brooders so it was just a matter of adding a second water dish and more food dishes. I sighed. I was internally battling myself over the need for a rooster and having to spend 6 months raising these birds to see if we got one. Looking at the baby chicks I asked myself why did I need a rooster? For more chicks? The chicks peeped and fell over on their faces, jumped and pecked at the walls of their bin.

Hah! I resigned myself to raising more chicks.

Friday morning around 2 am I heard strange noises outside the bathroom window. It was a barking/grunting noise that sounded like barking squirrels...foxes? coyotes? I flashed a light towards the chicken runs from my bedroom window. (Yeah, those roosters woke us up in the morning!) All the doors were secure. I shined it towards the dog run where we had some juvenile hens safely locked away. No big bodies in there, gate was secured. Maybe it was just gophers destroying my vegetable garden. Bastards. I wasn't going out at 2 in the morning to shoo them away, and I wasn't going to wake my husband up who had his first job in several months scheduled early the next morning. I lay down and went back to sleep.

The next morning as the crew arrived to load up trucks I awoke with thoughts of the previous night's noises on my mind. I needed to investigate who had been up to what before my husband left in case there was something freaky I would need him to fix or pursue (broken garden fencing, gophers sticking their tongues out at me, dead deer carcasses...)

Outside my bathroom window was a pile of feathers.

Uh-oh.

My husband had let the chickens out already and I went to the kennel where the five juveniles were. I counted only four.

I made my way to the crew who were in the front yard and heard my husband who had cut through the house in the back yard. I turned around and joined him there as he looked in the kennel.

"Where's the Rhode Island Red?" I asked referring to one of our adolescent pullets. I suspected where she was, I was in denial about where she was, I was hoping he’d seen her somewhere else.

He said she usually finds a way out of the kennel and then comes back in the morning.

My heart fell into my toes. I indicated he should follow me and pointed to the pile of feathers by our bathroom window. He frowned and indicated across the yard where more feathers were. I told him about the noises I'd heard last night. He frowned and said it didn't look like the Rhode Island's feather color, this must be a separate bird he concluded.

We then proceeded to the vegetable garden, a short distance away from the pin feather incrimination, only to find that our carefully constructed gopher proof vegetable box had indeed been raided by a gopher...or a vole. Bastards!

The watermelon that was growing on the vine was fine but the gophers had attacked the vine and my husband pulled up the gray limp plant. I brought the watermelon in to ripen it.

An hour later, after my husband had left, I received a call from my mail carrier. "We have 25 baby chicks here for you."

This is when the numbness set in. "You do?" I croaked.

"You sound surprised. Were you expecting them?" She asked pleasantly.

"No." I answered still feeling numb. I looked in the garage where my batch of 24 (2 died within a day of arriving) chicks were cheeping and eating and sleeping.

"Well, it's best if you come down and pick them up." She advised.

"Okay." I respond meekly.

My state of mind was so distracted that I left the house with the dogs still outside, which I never do because they go right under fencing and are basically loose. I went straight to the jobsite where my husband was working, only to see him drive by me in his truck, loaded down with construction debris. He waved, I stuttered, and he kept going.

I managed to track him to the local gas station where he came up to me as I got out of the car and asked "what's wrong?"

I guess my puzzled expression and blank face was a give away.

I actually had difficulty telling him that there were 25 baby chicks waiting for me to pick up at the post office. I couldn't even think how funny a situation this was. Once I got it out he looked at me blankly. "25?"

I nodded. Or I think I nodded, maybe I said yes, it doesn't matter. Animal lover that he is he said, "well you can't leave them there, they'll die. Better pick them up."

He also advised me to get another waterer, feeder, and bin to hold them all. Maybe the feed store would know what to do with them.

I went to the post office, picked up the loudly cheeping birds, and turned to leave. People in the post office smiled at me saying "we know what you've got, baby chicks how cute!" and one old man said, "They still ship those that way? We used to use baby chicks as bait for sharks." He smiled fondly at the memory. I asked "what kind of sharks?"

"Sand sharks" and he explained the process for tying the chick onto the line which in my numbness went in one ear and out the other.

"Isn't that nice?" I mumbled as more people paused to admire my cheeping box.

A woman called from across the parking lot "I know what you have!"

I said, "Would you like to buy some?"

She asked what kind and I answered "an accidental double shipment of Black Jersey Giants."

Her eyebrows rose. "Accidental? Aren't they cute!"

She laughed; I smiled carrying my box to my car.

The feed store explained to me that they couldn't sell chicks in their store due to health concerns and chicken diseases but if we wanted to hang flyers they would be more than happy to help us place some and did I want some chick food?

I walked away from there with a new feeder, a new waterer, a new chick bin, and went home. I didn't bother with a bag of chick food, since I had some at home.

I unpacked and looked at my 50 baby chicks and didn't see the bouncing cute puff balls that they were but the large birds they would become, examples of which were in my poultry yard clucking away right now. Twenty-two of them.

Two separate people had said that with the coyote attacks and the large number of birds I already have that I'm sponsoring wildlife "all you can eat buffet".

I'm still feeling a little numb.

That night after realizing the Rhode Island Red was definitely gone (the Coyote must've eaten the evidential red feathers) we moved the kennelled adolescent birds to the solid chicken houses.

That night when the coyote came he dug up my other watermelon and my cucumber plant.

I haven’t seen anymore gopher mounds in my vegetable garden.

The next night my young dog decided to pursue an interesting new smell. Believing she and my shepherd could chase off the coyote, and that they must need to go out for personal reasons, I let them out. After several washings at 10:30 at night she still has a trace of skunk smell on her face.

It takes 24 hours for a skunk to recover enough scent to spray again. I heard a coyote off in the distance causing the neighbor dogs to sound the alarm. I thought I knew what the coyote would be eating for dinner that night. I almost felt sorry for the skunk.