Tag: chicken stories

Ruby & Tuesday

~ Crystal Sands ~ 1 Comment

If you have followed my blog any at all over the past couple of years, you will know all about Ruby, but just in case you are new, Ruby is a highly-intelligent, high-maintenance chicken. She has no friends because she is not a people person at all. People in the flock do not like her, and she gets picked on sometimes. Mainly, I have seen that this is because Ruby doesn’t seem to want friends. She does nothing to fit in. She’s a lone wolf, a free spirit, and she demands her independence.

She is also demanding of me. To me, she is bossy, difficult, and will peck the heck out of me when I am trying to collect eggs. It doesn’t even have to be when I am getting eggs from under her (she sleeps in a private nest box because she won’t be near people on the roost). She will give me a hard peck for good measure just for being close to her. She keeps me in line, and I don’t mind doing her bidding because she’s so smart, so funny, and so unique.

This is Tuesday on the left and Ruby on the right. Look at how similar their combs are, and they both have that super smart look about them.

When Petty went broody late last summer and we decided to let her raise a clutch of fall babies, I debated about getting an egg from Ruby. The chicken would surely be smart, but would it be just too quirky or weird to fit in? How high maintenance would it be? My curiosity got the better of me, and I let Petty hatch a Ruby egg. The result has been magnificent–the result is Tuesday.

Tuesday was raised by the calmest, most patient mom in the world. Petty was so trusting, so nurturing, and the most chill little mama I have ever seen. This has been so good for all of her babies. All six turned out to be hens; they are all great hens, but I believe Tuesday is the greatest. It’s like she has all of Ruby’s fantastic characteristics–smart, independent, unique–without all of the negatives. Tuesday is not neurotic at all. She’s just different, and she’s at peace with herself about it.

Tuesday, like Ruby, spends most of her day away from the flock. She flies over the gate and hangs out in the front driveway area with Ruby. I do not worry about her wandering off, as she is too smart. She stays close, dodges any mail deliveries, and I set up a dog crate for her to lay eggs in. Pretty much every single day, I find a little cream-colored egg in the dog crate–a gift from Tuesday.

But the most interesting thing she does is that she is friends with Ruby! About a month ago, I noticed Ruby was hanging out a lot with a black chicken. They were under the trees, scratching around together for many hours one day when I decided to see which black chicken it was because, for a time, all three of Petty’s black chickens were hanging out in the front yard. When I got closer, I could see it was Tuesday. I guess the only person who could “get” Ruby would be someone related to Ruby.

When I told Ron about it, he said, “I guess we just had a grow a friend for Ruby,” and I guess that is right. Mother and daughter hang out a lot every day, and I just love to see it. I am thankful Ruby has a friend in this world. She’s still neurotic, but it’s maybe a little less than usual right now.

And Tuesday is just a dream. She’s so calm and smart and beautiful. She reminds me so very much of Poe. Ron spent yesterday working out front, and he said Tuesday followed him around just watching what he was doing all day (he was repairing an old wheelbarrow). Ron said she just studied him for hours.

What a gift from the universe! I am looking forward to getting to know Tuesday more, and since we letting nature take its course and naturally downsizing our flock, I am excited that Tuesday will be able to get extra attention and study. I think she’s a pretty magnificent bird. I’ll keep you posted!

In memory of plain Jane and sweet Charlotte

~ Crystal Sands ~ 1 Comment
That’s our sweet Charlotte right in front.

In the last week, we have lost two members of our flock. One was a bit of a surprise, and the other came suddenly but was a very old girl.

First, last Saturday evening, I had just been out giving treats to the flock and all had been well, but when I went out to close up the chickens, right in the front door I saw a dead hen. It was a big girl, and in the dark, I panicked and thought it might be Mary Jane. I went inside to get the flashlight and came back to find that it was Jane, Mary Jane’s daughter. She was only four year old, so it was hard to lose her. I am not sure why she passed. I could find nothing wrong with her. It looked like it was just that her heart had given out.

Jane was not supposed to be with us. During the start of the pandemic in 2020, there was a chick shortage, so I used our incubator and hatched quite a few baby chicks for people, probably about 100 in total. Some were given as chicks; others were raised by us until they were ready for a coop. We gave them to people and never charged money, but sometimes, people gave us gifts in return. We got a whole cord of wood from a couple of guys, so that was really nice. Jane was supposed to go out to those guys, but in the end, we decided to keep her.

I had tried really hard not to get attached to all those babies because I knew they were for other people, but Jane was a stand out. She was so curious, always checking me out. One day, Ron said, “There’s one hen in out there I think I’d like to keep.” As he began to describe her, I knew it was Jane! I was so excited that we agreed on keeping her, and so Jane, named so because she was the plainest hen in terms of looks, became a part of our flock.

She fit in so well, and in 2021, when I drove up north to get Poe grand baby eggs, it was Jane who went broody first and raised those babies. Jane raised Cora, Bertha, and Poe Jr. Jr. She did a great job–really too good of job–because Juliet was also raising a clutch at the same time, and Jane bossed Juliet around so badly that Juliet and her babies could barely move around with Jane’s permission.

Interestingly, Juliet had two hens she raised during that time. One was Ophelia who Juliet ended up rejecting early for some reason, and the other one was the only and only Ruby. I feel like Jane may have caused a lot of stress during Ruby’s upbringing, which goes a long way in explaining Ruby.

I am going to miss Jane so much. I assume she died a bit on the young side because she was a big girl with meat-bird genes, but she had a very, very good life in the flock, and I am so glad she stayed with us, especially since every single chicken we gave to those guys for the wood ended up being eaten by a fox. I think a lot of people got chickens during the pandemic, even when they weren’t quite ready for them. I quit hatching chicks for people after that because you know how I am, and the fox stories made me very sad.

This is Jane when she got to be a mama–a fierce mama. That baby chick next to her is Poe Jr. Jr.

Our sweet Charlotte died yesterday in the evening. It was also very sudden with no signs of illness at all. She was just old; she was out in there in the pasture with her people and then just died. She has been with us for a long time. She was a Buff Orpington I bought from a man in early 2017. He was selling them because his daughter had bought too many chicks, and as they grew up, she was overwhelmed. I bought Charlotte and Emily from him and immediately fell in love with them. I don’t know if they were sisters, but when you get a pair of hens, you just have to name them as if they are, so I named them Charlotte and Emily, after the Brontes.

I had hoped I was buying from a local breeder but was too naive to ask. I was more than a little disappointed when I found out they came from Tractor Supply, but it turned out to be okay. Charlotte was seven years old when she passed. Emily is still going, though I expect we won’t have her much longer. Still, that’s a pretty good run for some Tractor Supply chickens.

Emily and Charlotte were very close. They were inseparable for years, and in later years, still hung out a lot. Saint-Saens is either Emily or Charlotte’s daughter, and she always hung out with them as well. It’s one of the most fascinating things to me about chickens, but they tend to hang out with the people who look like them.

It was also interesting to me that both Emily and Charlotte got grumpy in their older age–a little mean sometimes. Buff Opringtons are such a docile breed, and those hens were so sweet most of their lives. Still, about two years ago, I noticed they were both just pecking everyone on the head like they owned the place. I guess they did. They were officially a part of the old guard in the coop, and I am so sad to have lost Charlotte.

But she was out pecking and scratching in the pasture and doing what she loved when she passed. She lived a very, very good life.

Last night, I tried to show her to Emily, to make sure Emily understood, but Rooster was too out of sorts about it. So, this morning, when Ron was about to take Charlotte out to the deep woods to feed a fox or someone in need, he held her down and showed her to the flock. He said the flock got very quiet and that Emily looked for a long time.

For various reasons I hope to write about soon, we can’t get any baby chickens this year and maybe next year. We also have several older hens. I am coming upon a time of loss–death without any new life–in this cycle of our farm as we try to downside our flock.

It’s going to be hard on my heart.

I miss Luna–and other updates

~ Crystal Sands ~ 3 Comments

Tomorrow will mark the two week anniversary of Luna returning to the flock. We had to keep the bully duck separated for a week, but Mean Girl has now returned to the flock as well. Our plan worked, and Mean Girl is no longer Mean Girl and is now just Carmelita again. Luna is getting along very well, though, I swear, in all of the snow and ice here yesterday, I think she looked at me with a certain kind of longing for her warm fire and Back cello suites.

Still, she is doing very well overall. The other ducks will not let me touch them unless they need some kind of help, but every night, when I deliver the bowl of peas at bedtime, I just touch Luna all over her little feathers and tell her I love her so much. She lets me. And that’s the extent of our relationship now. I can’t stop missing her, and I am definitely changed for the better by my experience with her. This summer, I’m going to make our son play some Bach on his cello outside on the deck where she can hear. I want to see if she remembers.

In other news, the ducks and chickens are laying in full force. I have been too worn out to try to sell eggs, even to most of our regular customers, so I think right now we have about 10 dozen eggs in the house–and that’s with our son eating many, many eggs every day. He loves fresh eggs. It’s a good thing he lives on a chicken farm.

Look at these beautiful duck eggs. That striped one is the little miracle Luna left for us the last night she was in the house. I did pretty well keeping her out of the light, and she only laid an egg about twice per week. I guess her “ink” was doing funny things. What a treasure!

We have had some terrible weather the last couple of days. Everything was all spring like, and I was ready for it. Then, we got snow and then more snow and wind and rain and ice and then some more snow. Ron and I spent all of yesterday shoveling trying to keep the ducks comfortable and trying to stay ahead of the ice. We did pretty well overall, but still, this morning, I had to use warm water to open the doors on the chicken coop and shed with the straw.

I told Ron this morning that I had never seen anything quite like this morning, but then I realized I remember saying that last year when we had the -50 degrees with the wind chill and that this is what climate change is all about–a whole bunch of “I have never seen anything like this before.”

Speaking of climate change, I actually went back to really writing this week. I have been in a drought for a long time. I have much to write in the blog, but I spent last week working on an article about climate change in Maine that will be published next month. The article was interesting to research, and I learned so much. It also felt good to be back to work in that way. When I was really struggling with COVID, I made a bunch of deals with myself and the universe that, if I could just get better, I was going to focus my energy on things I love much more. I am happy to be back to writing.

I sure miss Luna though.

Ruby showed up, like there was no big deal.

~ Crystal Sands ~ 1 Comment

Friends, I just had to write this morning to update you on Ruby and Luna. First of all, Ruby showed up this morning. She appeared from under the chicken house acting like there was no problem at all. She must have been chilly out there, but she’s just fine this morning. I am so thankful for that chicken and also sometimes worn of her antics. She just can’t seem to be like everyone else though, and I guess you can’t blame her for that.

Also, Luna was just fine last night for her first night in the duck house. Of course, our bully is still being separated, but it’s a great start for Luna. Hopefully, a week of separation will help Mean Girl (her real name is Carmelita, but I think she’s just going to be Mean Girl for now on) find her inner kindness. Let’s hope!

Though I miss Luna, one perk is that I now seem to have time to write. Luna was a lot of work these three months. It was worth it to get to know her on such a deep level, but I am kind of looking forward to getting back to writing.

Luna, Ruby, and a Really Tough Night

~ Crystal Sands ~ 5 Comments

When I wrote last, I wrote about my struggles with COVID, and dear readers, I am sad to report things got worse. To make a long story short, that “set back” I wrote about last time ended up being a much bigger set back than I thought it might be. Because of my autoimmune disorder, I ended up at the hospital–twice. I turns out my immune system decided to attack my nervous system. I had hours of not being able to walk or talk, and it was scary. Thankfully, I am doing much–much better. Thankfully, my immune system did not decide to attack my autonomic nervous system. I had to look that up when the doctor mentioned this. That’s the one that controls your automatic functions like breathing. Yeah, I am feeling pretty lucky overall, friends. Pretty lucky and very, very grateful!

I have been pretty joyful since getting out of the hospital last Thursday. I am joyful to be walking, talking, and spending time with my family–my furry and feathered family as well. Tonight, however, I am a little down because Luna is sleeping in the duck house for the first time since December 14 of last year, and I miss her terribly.

When the snow melted and the water puddles came, she started really wanting to go outside, but we have one duck, our Mean Girl, as I now refer to her, who kept beating Luna up so badly that I kept having to bring Luna back to the house. I finally devised a plan to let Luna join the rest of the flock–our Mean Girl is being isolated for a few days, maybe even a week or two. Meal Girl is spending her days in a fenced area where she can’t get to Luna to attack her, and we put her in a crate at night and bring her into the garage for safety. Mean Girl does not like this any little bit, but it’s necessary. Luna had a great day today, and hopefully, she’s doing well in the duck house tonight.

But when I took peas out to the ducks and Luna ate the peas and went into the duck house like everyone else, I cried and cried.

I am worn from cleaning up duck poop and carrying buckets of water as I empty her tub, but my heart is broken thinking about how much I loved the sound of Luna’s little duck feet walking across our old wooden floors. Her little webbed feet made such a splat-splat-splat as she took each step. And how I loved watching her sit in the morning sun coming through the window and fall asleep listening to her Bach cello suites.

I miss her already.

Sadly, I am missing someone else tonight. Ruby is literally missing. I am trying not to worry because she’s Ruby. She’s smart and is surely just hiding somewhere I can’t find her.

We had to leave right before dark to go pick up our son from art class in town, and Ruby was wanting to get in the coop. We were running late though, so I didn’t have time to get her into the coop. Ruby normally just perches on the gate until we get home, and then we put her up. When we got home tonight, she was not on her gate–or in the coop.

We searched and searched and could not find her. I have to believe that she is somewhere nearby just hiding and being stubborn. It will be cold tonight but not cold enough that she can’t make it. I just hope nothing gets her. Surely not. I can’t imagine life without that hen.

Send good vibes for Ruby and Luna tonight. I am saying a little prayer to the universe that no one picks on Luna in the duck house tonight and that my stubborn, quirky little Ruby is outside waiting for me in the morning. Please, oh please, let me find that bird in the morning.

photo credits: Ron Sands

I’m rich! Again. For a little bit. And a general update.

~ Crystal Sands ~ Leave a comment

It has been nearly two weeks since I have written, and I think this may be the longest I have been away from this blog since I started it. I have started and stopped many posts, but life gets in the way of my writing, as it does, but it has been doing so especially of late.

I love little Luna to the moon and back, so much so that I am going to have a hard time letting her go back to flock when the snow melts. It’s going to be a process, but she has healed so well that I think she should be able to go back to her people. I know it’s best for her. She needs to hunt for bugs and play in the mud, but I struggle with a possessive kind of love. Life keeps teaching. me, but I am a slow learner. Anyway, she’s a lot of work though, and I think my Luna work has taken up the nooks and crannies of my life when I used to be able to write.

Of course, all of that could just be an excuse. I think I have some writer’s block too. I think I’m struggling with the “what’s the point of all of this anyway” kind of writer’s block–the disillusioned kind. It feels good to be writing tonight though, so I’ll tell you what all has been going on.

First of all, I’m rich with eggs again! The light comes back so quickly here in Maine, and we went from getting 2 to 3 eggs per day to 12 to 14 eggs per day in no time, it seems. I feel so rick when the eggs come back. We have eaten eggs for breakfast and dinner, and I even had enough to sell my first carton last week. It was so good to see my favorite egg customer again. I love that she loves our eggs.

The hens are doing well. The three roosters are still getting along. Rooster is hanging in there, still enjoying his retirement. Mary Jane is doing so well that I found her on the top roost again last night. This morning, however, she was wise enough to not jump down on her own, and she waited for me to scoop her up and put her on the coop floor. I guess neither of us wanted a repeat of her leg injury. Thankfully, tonight she was in a nest box, which is not up nearly so high.

Ruby is still doing her Ruby thing, though she’s had some struggles this winter. Petty’s babies are kind of a gang, and they like the driveway, which has always been Ruby and Juliet’s territory. Well, this little gang has been mean to Ruby and Juliet and running them off. I’m probably going to have to do something about this because I watched out the window yesterday and poor Ruby just went from one chicken to another who was mean to her. It was like she couldn’t get away. They don’t hurt her. Thankfully, our flock isn’t like that, but they make it known that she is an outcast. They don’t like her nervous energy perhaps.

People like certainty. I am uncertain about everything. I think chicken’s like certainty too. I think Ruby and I are too much the same.

In sadder new, we lost a dear friend to a tragic accident this weekend, so we have been in some mourning. Also, yesterday, on our evening walk, a dog off lead came up to us, and Boudica turned into a werewolf. She is so, so, so strong and so fierce. I have a fairly seriously pulled muscle in my shoulder thanks to that little scene. I kept her away, but it took literally every bit of strength I had in my body. I am in quite a bit of pain today, so it was a rough weekend. It was hard to do the morning chores this morning.

The seeds we ordered have arrived, and we are planning the spring. I just have to order the Oxheart carrots still. Oh, and we ordered some cherry trees and two more pear trees. I have decided after having my own canned pears all winter that I cannot live my life going forward without my own canned pears.

Finally, I am ready for the winter to be done with us. I know we surely have at least a month or more to go, but we are getting close. I think, maybe, I see some buds coming on my Maple tree friend.

We are ALL made of stars.

~ Crystal Sands ~ 2 Comments

Last week, Ron brought this beautiful egg to me and said it reminded him of a picture of the universe he had just seen online. He said it made the egg even more beautiful to him.

“We are all made of stars,” I said.

And then he showed me the picture of the universe he saw, and it was remarkably like the spots on the beautiful egg our little Faure lays. I couldn’t share that exact photograph because it is copyrighted, but I found this older picture of the universe. The one you see here was taken by the Hubble telescope in 2009. The patterns on Faure’s egg are so similar to the photo of the universe, and this connection Ron pointed out to me made me think about just how much humans have in common with animals around us, and this was something I didn’t fully understand until I became a farmer. Living so closely with animals helps me understand that humans aren’t that special and yet we are so, so special.

We are all made of star stuff–carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and such–ALL of us. I think most humans think we are special but forget that elephants, dogs, chickens, and ducks who like Bach are made of the same stuff. So many people think we are so different from the animals around us. For a long time, western science said so too. Science is catching up to the truth, I think, but of course, some people have known all along. In Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, she writes about the Potawatomi language having words for plants and animals that would translate as things like “tree people” and “horse people.”

In the ten years I have been watching my chickens live their lives in their little community on our farm, I have seen how they make friends, mourn for each other, have people they don’t like, snuggle each other, argue with each other, fight with each other. They are social creatures. They worry. They anticipate. Some of them make cross species connections to me. I see how most of them go along with the crowd. There are some unusual ones who struggle to fit in with the crowd. There can be a price to be paid for not fitting in too. Doesn’t this sound familiar? In so many ways, we are all the same–different scale, different levels of it, but the same stuff.

In the past, when I have tried to tell people this, I have been dismissed, even laughed at, reminded that we can’t “humanize animals,” which is frustrating, especially given the research on chicken intelligence. I have seen some people even seem offended that I would compare humans to chickens.

But it’s magical to me that we all have so much in common, that we are all so similar. There are pattens in Nature that repeat everywhere. Nature is efficient like that. If it works, it works. And we all have those patterns in our cells–in the fabric of who we are. It binds us, does it not?

That’s the magic in this world, and I think we miss this too much. But it’s there, right in front of us–just waiting for us to pay attention to it.

A Breakdown Over the Chicken Feed

~ Crystal Sands ~ 2 Comments

We started feeding our chickens organic feed in 2019 after reading more about issues with regular chicken feed. The organic was more expensive, of course, but based on what I was reading about the quality of ingredients in most chicken feed, it seemed worth the money. It was for the chickens but also for us. There is not a ton of research that I can find on how much a bio filter chickens are, but it seems pretty clear that, if you are eating chicken eggs, what goes in their little bodies goes into your body.

Over the years though, the quality of the organic feed we buy has declined significantly while the price has gone up. I get that this is just how things are. The food is still organic, so that’s important, but our bags of feed are full of food dust. Just dust. It makes the chickens sneeze, and I have to throw out pounds and pounds of it. When I do, I just think about how much money I am throwing away and how much of a waste of resources it is.

This morning, I did my usual thing of sifting through the bags of chicken feed and throwing out the dust. I had just enough actual food pellets left in an open bag to fill up both chicken bowls and the duck bowl.

As I was delivering the food bowls to the coop, I saw that our new rooster, Rostropovich, was on Mary Jane, our pardoned meat bird who will be 7 years old this June. Normally, she will let him have it for trying to mate with her, but she just let him and made a sad little noise. When I got back to deliver the fresh water, that little stinker was on her again. I shoved him off, and Mary Jane stumbled.

I realized something was not right with Mary Jane, so I had to scoop up that big chicken and bring her into the house. She had a bit of a poopy butt, but she seems great otherwise. Her comb looks good, and she has no mites. I think she has hurt her leg but, hopefully, not in a bad way. I did see her on the top roost yesterday, which is not a good idea for a nearly 7 year-old meat bird who must surely weigh 12 to 15 pounds. I’m hoping she just has a sprain.

I went out in the snow and dug out the dog crate, cleaned it up, put in fresh straw, trimmed Mary Jane’s back feathers to help her avoid poopy butt going forward, and I got her set up in the garage. She seemed pretty good about getting away from the flock–well, getting away from that young rooster.

Then, it was back inside to get Luna’s nest, food, and water ready for the day. I had to go open a new bag of the dusty feed to make Luna’s bowl, and I couldn’t get it open. I have always prided myself in being able to open the feed bags. It seems like a small thing, but there is a trick to it. There is a little tab on one side. If you pull that, the string comes all loose, and the bag opens. Well, the stupid company making the feed changed the bag, and there’s no more tab. So it’s just you and your cold fingers and the stupid string.

This morning that stupid string was just it, and I broke down and cried because they sell us dust and can’t even give us a tab to open it anymore. And it’s just all the things. The straw we have bought for years (and it’s not cheap) has repeatedly been full of plastic bits that we have pick out, so our chickens don’t eat it and it doesn’t end up in our compost. And the feed company sells dust. And grocery prices are so high that my family back home struggles to afford food, and I can’t mail them food from Maine because shipping is so expensive. Plus, I only know how to can sauce and pears and jam. I send them those things as gifts, but that’s not enough. And, though Ron and I are so tired sometimes, we have to keep going because our food industry is literally poisoning all of us and lowering our IQs and giving us cancer. I realize I am just making these claims without evidence, as an academic should never do, but we all know it’s true.

And I also realize all of this is “first world problems” considering the wars and the hungry people in the world and mess humans make of things everywhere for no good reason, as far as I can tell, but it all came down to that stupid feed bag this morning. I don’t know how farmers are going to keep making it. Feed is so expensive, and the straw is full of plastic, and there is drought, and there is flooding, and I have had three friends–two of them farmers–close their businesses in the last year because it’s all just hard.

This morning, I had a little breakdown–over the chicken feed.

But then, after I finished crying, I went in the house, got the scissors, opened the stupid bag, and got sweet Luna her food. She talks to me now. We are starting to understand each other.

And that helps.

And I am going to have to figure out how to get the organic ingredients to make our own feed. I read that it’s problematic, but it has to be better than dust.

photo credit: Prince Abid, Unsplash

Rooster’s Retirement

~ Crystal Sands ~ Leave a comment

Do you remember last winter when I was worrying about Rooster, thinking he may not make it through the winter? Well, we are here in the middle of yet another winter, and that boy is going strong–stronger than I have seen him in at least a couple of years. I think I know why.

Rooster has retired from his job.

Rooster has always been a worrier. I think that’s why I have always loved him so much. He’s my kindred spirit. He has also been the one chicken in our whole flock who continued to struggle with the respiratory illness from 2019 years after everyone else was doing great. In the winter, every winter, he would rattle when he breathed sometimes. I tried everything from my natural remedies to breaking down and doing a full round of prescribed antibiotics. He would get better, but we would always relapse. I realize now that it was maybe from the stress of his job because Rooster is doing surprisingly well in terms of his health. I have not heard a single rattle from that boy all winter (I am literally knocking on wood right this second), and he seems so happy–happier than I think I have ever seen him.

A few years ago, we tried to keep a second rooster, Romeo. Rooster really seemed to like him, but Romeo started harassing and then hurting Ruby, so….

I remember thinking that Rooster seemed mad at us for quite some time after that. So, when Dvorak got his chance to try for second rooster of our flock, I was so grateful it worked out.

I noticed that Rooster trained him well and that Dvorak learned well. Dvorak is a very smart boy and seems to be a bit of a worrier like Rooster, though not to the same extent. He paid close attention to Rooster though. You could see him studying Rooster. It was awesome to see. Dvorak was my sweet baby boy from the summer of 2022. I had never seen such a sweet, snuggly baby boy, so I was so thankful he got along with Rooster and developed into an excellent rooster for our flock. Dvorak doesn’t have much of a tail, but he has a big heart.

He and Rooster have worked really well together guarding the flock, and I noticed that, with Dvorak around, every now and then, Rooster would take a rest this summer and just dust bathe or stretch out in the sun. He could NEVER do that before. Still, it wasn’t much of a rest, and he mostly kept working.

Then, Ruby raised two babies in the late spring, and they both turned out to be boys. I was devastated because, with two roosters, we could never keep three. Our flock is just not quite big enough. I found the best home in the history of the world for the gray rooster, but we still had the little black rooster. He was pretty skittish because he was raised by a neurotic mama (Ruby), but he just kept getting more and more beautiful. His real mama is Hector, and he started to look like Black Copper Maran rooster like his mama. And these roosters are gorgeous!

I wanted to keep him, but I figured there was no way. Too many roosters means misery for the hens. I started looking for a home for him. He comes from a great breed and is carrying a very dark egg gene. This is prized, so I thought it would be very easy to find him a home.

Twice, I thought I had made the deal, but when it came time to really do it, they changed their minds. One just ended up being too far to drive, even though I was willing to drive a long way to help. This was also right in the middle of “Free Rooster Looking for a Good Home” season in the fall on social media, so I had to admit defeat.

I asked Ron about what to do, and he said maybe we should try to keep him. I agreed that it wouldn’t hurt to just try, but we both agreed that if the hens started to suffer that he would have to go. I would try again to find him a home, and if that didn’t work, well….

Dear readers, I am happy to report that it worked out very well–like better than I could have imagined well because, as it turns out, Rooster really just wanted to retire. He is pretty old after all. He is 8 years old, which is really good for a Rooster who has been eating feed formulated for hens his whole life.

Dvorak went to work right away training the new boy, and Dvorak is young, so he was just extra. He watched every move the new boy made and put him in his place right away. He never hurt him, and it was a great sign that he never had to. The new rooster went right along with the program and is now doing great. He’s doing so great that we gave him a name. We decided to name him Rostropovich since we had to give our original Rostropovich to a new home.

And, of course, the final great part of this story is watching Rooster enjoy his retirement. He just does whatever he wants all day long. After the near miss with the hawk, he did work for a few days, but mostly, he rests. He eats. He visits with his favorite hens. He makes sure he gets some of the snacks from the kitchen scraps. I even saw him hanging out in a nest box the other day. He like, “I’m just seeing what all the fuss is about.”

His breathing is clear. He has more energy. I do regular checks on him for mites because, when a chicken is run down, they are more likely to get mites, but he has been free and clear all year. I also saw him mate with a hen the other day, and he doesn’t do that a lot any more. And you can just see it in his face. He’s enjoying life. I have no words for how happy this makes me. It also gives me hope for a worrier like me.

I don’t know how much longer he has, but I am grateful he is doing so well and enjoying some retirement. That sweet boy has earned it. I love him to the moon and back, and I hope Rooster’s retirement makes it so I get more time with him and that he gets more time living a pretty good life.

A Little Bit About Tuesday

~ Crystal Sands ~ 1 Comment

This afternoon, I went outside to get my son who was walking our long driveway. He gets antsy during homeschool, so he takes mini walks between each subject. When I went to find him, I saw little Tuesday busying herself in the driveway while the rest of the flock looked out the screen door of the coop in envy. Everybody loves driveway time, but when I give the chickens too much driveway time, Ron complains about the driveway getting overwhelmed by chicken poop and asks me why he spent months building a 3/4 acre fence by hand. I just make a face that says, “well, we all appreciate it, but if you could fence the driveway, that would be great.”

So everyone gets just about two hours of driveway time per day. It’s pretty good, I think.

Of course, we have our exceptions to the rules. Ruby, Kate, and Juliet can have driveway time whenever they want because they have a hard time being with the flock. This also annoys Ron sometimes because it is a pain to get them somewhere safe if we have to leave in the evening, but we do the extra work because we understand Ruby, Kate, and Juliet. They need their space. Truly, on the really cold days, I cannot let them out of the coop until it reaches about 15 degrees, and it just breaks Juliet’s heart. She gets panicky and upset. Sometimes, I just want to bring that chicken into the house, but she might not like it here either. I think she just needs alone time, and Ruby and Kate are not far behind her in this department.

It makes sense then that Tuesday was out in the driveway alone this afternoon because she is Ruby’s baby. I don’t know how she is getting out, but this is the third or fourth time. She might be flying. Ruby can fly over the gate to get out, but she seems to prefer not to. It’s like she wants me to wait on her–and I do.

When I saw Tuesday, I started talking to her. My son overheard and said, in his teenager voice (he has different voices, and “teenager” is one of them), “That chicken is named Tuesday?”

“She is,” I said. “And another black chicken who was her hatch-mate is Wednesday.”

“Where’s Monday?” he asked.

“Nobody wants to be named Monday,” I answered.

He thought his seemed right.

Tuesday is starting to be more and more like her mama. I’m seeing her pull away from her hatch mates and go it alone more. Interestingly, Wednesday does this too. In fact, a few weeks ago, Wednesday spent the night outside by herself–all night long! Ron had put up the chickens that night, so I was a little grumpy. Thankfully, she was okay.

Anyway, Tuesday is very curious about me. She has that way of looking at me that is different–that I see in the super smart chickens. Thankfully, she seems to be more chill than her mama, so I am hopeful. She reminds me a little bit of Poe. That also makes me hopeful.

Last week, when Ron was complaining about the chickens who insist on hanging out in the driveway all day, I reminded him how he would feel if he were forced to spend his whole life with people, and he had to admit it was only right to let them have their way.

“Well, don’t breed any more chickens from that line,” he said.

“Yeah, I really shouldn’t,” I said, but then I added, “But I already did though. Tuesday is Ruby’s baby.”

He gave me a look of despair. I knew he must have wondered why I would do that when Ruby is so darn difficult. The truth is just that I don’t know for sure, but I think it’s because Ruby is also so darn charming. I think Tuesday might be extra charming.

I can’t wait to find out–to see who she becomes. Oh, and I can’t wait to find out what color of egg she lays! Ruby lays an lovely olive egg.