IMUS IN THE MORNING
Our first rooster was a turken. A turken isn’t really a cross between a turkey and a chicken…it’s all chicken. It’s just that it has a naked neck so it looks like a turkey. In other words, it’s incredibly ugly. Our first rooster was also a mistake. We had ordered a couple dozen “hardy egg laying mix” chicks from McMurray Hatchery that came in the mail on Easter morning. This mix included one “exotic” chick that ended up being a male turken.
At first I thought that maybe all the other chicks were pecking the feathers out of this poor little one’s neck. It looked so bare and wrinkled and vulnerable. This chick with the bare neck also had a top-knot of yellow feathers that stuck straight up on top of its head…so when he pecked he looked like a fantasy bird from a Dr. Seuss book. Soon it became pretty evident that this guy was growing bigger and stronger and bossier than all the rest.
As he matured, his feathers were a beautiful golden color with long curved tail feathers, but his damn neck was impossible to ignore. His neck was so scrawny and scaly…he looked like a train wreck. Hence, he was named Imus, and he developed the same sexist attitude.
Imus was a pretty reasonable chap, leading and protecting his beautiful free-range flock of multi-colored girls. Reasonable, that is, until the big “Chicken Holocaust of ‘99” when he snapped and literally lost his mind. A dog from down the road, a huge brutish Chow named Tony, came into our yard when we weren’t home and killed 17 of our girls for sport. Apparently, Imus fought to save them but he was no match for Tony. There was carnage and feathers everywhere. A neighbor, Mr. O’Boyle, sadly brought a wheel barrow full of carcasses from his lawn. We were devastated. So was Imus. I’m sure Imus felt like he had failed in his duty to protect his harem. He was never the same after that.
I, on the other hand, was furious. I called the local animal control officer and he read me the rules about protecting domestic livestock from predators. I called Tony’s owner and told him if his Chow was ever in our yard again…I was going to shoot him. I meant it. We never saw that dog again.
But the damage was done. Imus became a ferocious lunatic when he thought the hens were being threatened. Unfortunately, that included us. It became almost impossible to go in to the coop to feed them. I had to approach the coop with a garbage can lid like a shield and a hockey stick to fend off Imus who would fly at me, razor-sharp spurs first. It became a nightmare chore to deal with him.
The deciding event was when Imus attacked a little boy who was visiting my birth center. That was just too much. Short of sending Imus to a chicken therapist and putting him on Prozac, I decided to foist him off on my good friend Kendall. Why she agreed to take him in, I’ll never know, but she did. I put on leather fire-place gloves and threw a towel over Imus when he was sleeping and drove him to Kendall’s in the middle of the night.
Kendall’s coop was a funky structure that had a metal roof under a high window. Somehow, Imus discovered how to escape out the window every morning and slide down the metal roof to the yard below. It was a pretty amazing sight to see this big awkward bird sliding on his back with his feet sticking straight out in front of him, his bare neck arched forward, the whole way down to freedom.
Imus was lucky. He got to spend several more years in this world as a solitary bird until one day he just never returned from roaming.
What I learned from Imus is that roosters take their role as flock champion very, very seriously.
ARMAND THE GOOD
Our second rooster was an impossibly handsome Columbian Wyandotte. This rooster had a rose-comb and beautiful long, curved tail feathers that were black and green iridescent in the sun. He was a big boy and he knew he was gorgeous, he proudly strutted his stuff. This rooster, Armand, was friendly and very polite…but he was also insanely horny. Even though Armand had a couple dozen “girlfriends” to entertain him, he was insatiable. He was very considerate and gentle though, he never ripped up the girls like some other clodhopper roosters do. He always did this little two-step, sideways shuffle mating dance with one wing fanned out to impress a girl and get her in his orbit before he mounted her. His idea of sexy chicken foreplay, I guess.
One time early in Armand’s mating career, a nice, conservative neighbor from down the road was visiting. This older gentleman and I were standing on the lawn chatting when Armand came over and mounted a hen at the man’s feet. Armand banged the snot out of her right there. When Armand was finished, the hen straightened up and shook her feathers indignantly and stomped away.
The older man’s mouth was dropped open. He said, “Did he just…? Jesus.”
He shook his head and went home.
After a couple of years, Armand developed a mild respiratory affliction that occasionally made it hard for him to crow, kind of seemed like a severe sore throat. I accidentally found a cure one night when I had Armand in the living room in front of the woodstove to see if heat would help. I was drinking Scotch and Armand walked over and took a beak full of Scotch. He sneezed and took another beak full. He crowed like hell the next morning. Every once in a while I think he was faking a sore throat just so he would be invited in for a cocktail. Armand was the only Scotch drinking rooster I ever heard of.
Armand also fathered the only chick ever to be hatched on our farm. This lack of hatchlings was probably more my fault than Armand’s. Armand was definitely hitting the mark. I just couldn’t leave the fertilized eggs alone. Not trusting nature to take Her course, I was always messing with them, so the one chick that hatched was a total surprise.
One night Tom and I returned home from dining out when we both went in the coop to say Goodnight to the ladies and gentleman. It was actually unusual for us to both be in the coop at the same time. I picked up one of the broody white Silkies that was setting on a clutch of eggs…and there was a fuzzy yellow golf-ball with two tiny black eyes looking back at us. She looked as astounded as we did.
Tom laughed, “Well, one actually made it despite your help.”
“Oh my god, this is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” I sighed.
I named her “Winona” which means “first-born.”
I sat for a couple of hours watching them and I had the unbelievable good fortune to see the mother Silkie teach Winona how to eat. The mother picked up a kernel of cracked corn, dropped in front of the baby and then peck…peck…pecked it and swallowed it. Winona just stood there watching. The mother repeated her lesson, although this time she peck…peck…pecked a little more empathically. Winona still didn’t move. This time the mother hen took the corn and in frustration PECK…PECK…PECKED! pounding until Winona hopped over and pecked it and swallowed it. I swear I saw the mother hen roll her eyes as if to say, “We got a real live wire in this one.”
Armand had an illustrious career that would have made any Casanova proud. He died one night in the dead of winter. I went into the coop in the morning and found him lying stiff and cold on the floor. I was immeasurably sad that I hadn’t realized he was so gravely ill. Maybe his death could have been prevented if only I had invited my old friend in for a nightcap.
LEWIS AND CLARK
A French woman who had a baby born at my birth center gave me her whole flock of Bantam chicks because she had to suddenly move out-of-state. The chicks were a great addition except when they matured, most of them were roosters. I already had Armand at the time and I didn’t want to cause any unrest in a perfectly contented flock…so I tried to give the fledgling roosters away. Nobody but nobody wanted a pack of testosterone driven, fowl tempered, teenaged male chickens.
It got to the point where they began challenging Armand’s dominance as he was an aging rock-star by then. I couldn’t stand the fighting. I decided to drive them deep into the woods and let them go to support the local wildlife. I know this sounds cruel but my neighbors, who are farmers, do this all the time. I let all the fuzzy-footed boys go with a prayer that their demise would be swift and painless.
About four days later, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Two of the young Banty roosters had somehow made it back to the chicken yard. This means they had crossed a major stream, went up and over a good sized hill in the forest and down a very long, overgrown field to get home. Because of their obvious excellent navigational skills, I named them Lewis and Clark.
Lewis could fly, however, and he wouldn’t stay in the coop at night. He would fly up in to a tree and roost there instead of in the hen house. I told him this was a pretty precarious habit, really not conducive to life but he refused shelter. I was right. One morning, I saw a trail of Lewis’s brown-colored feathers going down the driveway and I knew Lewis was gone.
Clark, however, wasn’t going anywhere. He knew a good thing when he saw it. By now Armand was departed and Clark became the new king of the roost, although he was very short and had a nasty temper. I think Clark had “short man syndrome”, seriously, he was mean to the girls who were much bigger than he was. In short, Clark was a little bastard.
People told me Banty roosters could be fierce and Clark was no exception. He raked all the hens’ backs with his spurs when he mated with them until their backs were bloody and featherless. He was jealous of the big hens and made them cower in the corner to avoid his vicious attacks.
It all culminated one day when I went into the chicken yard and Blackie, a huge black Australorp, came running to me and jumped in my arms for help. Her eye was hanging out by the stalk. Clark had gouged out her eye in a jealous rage. I was not turning a blind eye to this domestic violence situation any longer.
I asked Tom if he would help me kill Clark. We had never done this before, but Tom set up a log chopping block and got his axe. I held Clark’s neck over the block and Tom took one swift chop and Clark’s head was on the ground. Here’s where I made a mistake. I let go of Clark’s body. He began flying crazily all around the yard in a frenzied zigzag pattern. Headless. It was quite unnerving.
Tom said, “F$%^!…it really is true.”
I buried Clark behind the compost pile but I didn’t have any remorse. He was a terrible example of male macho chicken shit. Good riddance.
The next morning, when I opened my front door, I screamed to see Clark’s head lying on the door mat.
The dogs had left me a trophy.
P. DIDDY, NH’S SMALLEST COCK
I got our current rooster at the Davisville Flea Market; please don’t ask what possessed me. Obviously, I didn’t know he was a he until some time later when he attempted his first crowing. His voice cracked like any other adolescent male but he was loud.
This rooster is about the size of a healthy banana. Truly, I believe I may have New Hampshire’s smallest cock. But even in his mini state, he is a true stunner. P. Diddy is golden hued with blue and red feathers, almost like a small ornamental pheasant. He looks like an Aztec headdress shining in the sun. Bling!
Anyway, the girls absolutely adore P. Diddy. They follow him around and he finds choice worms for them. He is the only rooster I’ve ever heard who actually chuckles. He makes sounds of pure delight when he finds a choice morsel for the girls. He always gives it to them first, at his expense. Such a suave gentleman. When they roost at night, P. Diddy is ensconced underneath the breasts of two of the largest hens, his little head sticking out from beneath their curvaceous, bodacious down feathers. If a rooster could smile deliriously, this’d be it.
P. Diddy is the Tom Cruise of the chicken kingdom. He’s tiny for sure, but somehow, he knocks the ladies dead. When he crows, he puts his all into it. He stands on his tip-toes and throws his head back and he almost falls over backwards every time he lets it rip. But he gets the job done. At first, I thought I might have to get him a step-ladder or something…but nope. He is so fast and so on target, when he’s done the hens look around like, “What was that breeze?”
One night this spring, P. Diddy was not in the roost at dusk. I didn’t find him until the next morning when I heard a feeble attempt at a crow. I found him on his side in the back field, staggering and still trying to crow to alert the flock to danger. He had been beaten up very badly by a skunk and left for dead. I thought he was blind and brain damaged. His eyes were swollen shut and he couldn’t stand or eat.
I brought him in the house and put him in the “Chicken Whisperer” which is a woven basket with a top that is warm and dark and safe. I fed him with an eyedropper for two weeks until he hobbled out of the basket to protect and be with his beloved girls once again. I swear they celebrated his return; the noise of their joy at seeing him alive was awesome.
He made a complete recovery. Today he is running around on his fast little, road-runner legs making sure everyone is accounted for.
Long Live P. Diddy! He’s the Man!
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Carol Leonard is a midwife and a writer and is the author of the best-selling memoir, Lady’s Hands, Lion’s Heart, A Midwife’s Saga, Bad Beaver Publishing, 2008. For further info, go to www.badbeaverpublishing.com.
