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.

A Rooster Named Elvis

When I tell people I have a rooster named Elvis it usually causes them to hide a smile behind a hand, smirk, frown, or just ask the simple question, "why?" The obvious answer would be “because he’s black”, but the actual story is that when I brought him home and introduced him to my hens they all started doing a provocative chicken dance. They literally got all shook up.

We got Elvis because I wanted “bigger” chickens. Up until this point I had “beginner chickens” known as Banties. Banties are a self-sufficient breed of chicken, they’ll procreate with a rock. They’re fast and flighty which makes them hard for the predators to get. But they are not prolific egg layers; their eggs are categorized as “small” because they are a small bird. I didn’t have a need for bigger birds until a long time livestock owner came to the house and upon seeing my flock said, “Wow, your chickens are little!” My pride was wounded. She said it almost laughing. My birds are little? You mean there are bigger chickens out there? How big can they get? What’s the biggest breed out there? Can I have one? Do I want one? In the back of my mind I determined to get bigger birds.

It started with Buff Orpingtons. Orpingtons are a wonderful, sweet tempered, friendly, docile chicken. Unlike Banties they are bigger. Also unlike Banties they are prolific egg layers. And they are not flighty or fast. I first realized this might be a problem when I had them free ranging on the property early in the morning and noticed a German Shepherd chasing them. “Hey!” I yelled at the dog. The birds had wandered a good one hundred yards away from the dog run and house. The Orpingtons were doing a great strategy of dodge and serpentine over the open yard scattering in different directions. “Hey!” I yelled at the dog again. He finally halted and looked towards me. Something wasn’t right with his coloring—and the way he carried his tail--I realized that he wasn’t a dog. He quickly assessed me as too far away (which I was thank goodness) to be a threat and continued to try to chase the birds. In the pause of the second ‘hey’ the birds had made a mad rush for the yard and towards me half flying half running over the fence. I have two dogs. They were in the yard with me. And they did not have the scent of the Coyote and so they didn’t act protective of me towards the coyote. Not that I would want them to necessarily, but it was reassuring to have them near even if they were just looking at me after dropping a ball as if to ask “so, are you going to throw the ball or just stand there?” The coyote sauntered off realizing the prey was lost to him that morning. I realized Orpingtons don’t fly and my dogs needed to be trained better to react when I got agitated about coyotes in the yard...or maybe they're just fine because coyotes can do damage to dogs.

Everybody says “you don’t need a rooster to have a bird lay eggs”, which is true. Birds will ovulate with or without a rooster. However, after hearing the warning clucks of my Banty rooster and watching the hens dodge for cover when a big bird flew overhead, I knew that roosters did have a purpose. They protect the flock.

My Orpingtons were supposed to be Pullets (baby female chicks) but low and behold one of them turned out to be a rooster. I was comforted with the knowledge that the Banties had their rooster, and the Orpingtons had theirs. Life was good…until we got a new puppy.

We lost our Orpington rooster, then a hen as we tried to determine whether the puppy was responsible. Resorting to the tried and true farm trick of tying the carcass around the neck of the dog she was broken of any chicken killing after a week of meat bees swarming her on hot days. I needed another big rooster to protect my Orpingtons. And so we discovered the local poultry auction.

I saw an ad in the local paper about a poultry auction held at the beginning of every month and we went to check out the livestock. Among the birds I spotted a large black rooster. I asked the health department inspector who routinely checks all the birds what kind of chicken he was. She told me “a Black Giant”. Black Giants are also known as Jersey Giants. They are one of the largest breeds of domestic chickens, I had read somewhere. Larger breeds are descended from the Jungle fowl of Indonesia, but that’s another story. An adolescent, this rooster was just starting to crow and although he wasn’t full-grown yet, he was big and had already had his spurs clipped once. My eyes greedily took in his massive size and I thought, “Nobody will call my birds little again!” I shelled out $7 for him and took him home and a few other birds to my girls.

When we brought the big black rooster home we had to put him in the chicken run along with a Bar Rock and some Buffs. When my Orpingtons heard him clucking they came running and started shimmying and twitching their tail feathers. These girls liked him, they really liked him. That’s when we decided to name him Elvis. Sleek black feathers, a crooning cluck that brought the girls running, and a cute rooster dance that just had them swooning to the ground in hen delight. Elvis would eventually be king of my roost.