Long over-due update

I must offer sincere apologies to anyone who is reading this blog (and if you are, sincere thanks as well) as I have not updated for quite a while. It has been over a month, which in my chicken years, is close to their entire adolescence. We had multiple computer problems and vacation times and, well, life happened.

The chicks are very close to adulthood now, at approx. 16 weeks. Some internet sources say the hens should be thinking about laying eggs soon, so the rush is on to build boxes. How have we solved the rooster problem? We haven't.

Roughly half of the chicks (We call them "chicks" or the "babies" to distinguish them from the adults) are roosters. They are fine, handsome fellows with interesting personalities and wonderful presence in the yard. They all subjugate themselves to Bruce, the king of the yard, and there hasn't been any fighting. They do indulge in a bit of posturing occasionally, but never around Bruce.

Any conflicts they have are usually caused by their growing awareness of their "romantic" side, and their efforts at figuring out what they're supposed to do with it. When a rooster mounts a hen, he grabs her by the feathers on the back of her neck and climbs on. The baby roosters understand that they are supposed to grab their intended by the back of the neck feathers, but they get a bit confused as to who they are supposed to be grabbing and the grabbing bit seems to be all they know about sex. So they grab the young hens and each other indiscriminately. It is not unusual to see a young hen or roo racing around the lawn with a hapless rooster in tow, clinging desperately to the fleeing sibling's neck feathers and wondering what to do next. Somebody always gets soundly told off. Even if the intended is a hen, and she doesn't jump and run like a startled rabbit, the romantic roo still doesn't know what to do after the initial grabbing.

I have to admit, though, that my boys are more than making up for their confusion in the romance department by their manful efforts at crowing. A few of them have been crowing for over a month now, which I was convinced was wonderfully precocious of them. Like everything else that is sweet and funny about young beings learning to be adults, the roos' first crows are precious. They sound like they are crowing through a kazoo. Bruce usually starts crowing between 4:00 and 5:00 am. Then the kazoo symphony begins in the babies' quarters. I can tell how many are crowing by their distinctive voices. In fact, all the babies went through a nasal, honking stage. They cheeped like babies until they looked almost like adults, and then their voices changed and they began to sound a bit like ducks. Now they are cooing and clucking like grown chickens. Marc doesn't remember the chicks of his youth going through the awkward kazoo stage, but then again he wasn't married to an obsessed woman then.

Usually, by now, we would be seriously thinking about preparing the extra roosters for the oven. As you can tell, I'm not there yet. I don't know if I ever will be. They're not challenging Bruce, nor are they fighting over the hens. The fact is, if they manage to work out some sort of arrangement among themselves that leads to relative peace in the flock, we'll keep them. We don't mind giving them away to people who need a roo for their hens, but none of us feels up to eating them. We've watched with a mixture of pride and dismay as so many of them have developed into handsome, manly roos. I don't know if it is possible for there to be peace in the flock.

I have to admit that each night when I go to count them and put them to bed, I stroke each chick and talk softly to them, encouraging them to be good and kind to each other. I even pray, as I close the doors, than they will be peace-full. I do this with then adults too. It may seem silly, but at this very minute, from where I am sitting on the couch, I can see one of the kittens snuggling up with the bunny on the front porch. At the moment, we have 3 dogs here (2 visiting), 2 cats, the rabbit and 25 chickens, and everyone gets along. In fact, one of the visiting dogs is Toby, a hyperactive Pomeranian who promptly irritated everyone in the yard except Sheldon, one of the cats, who made a point of repeatedly approaching Toby until he calmed down enough to be friends and snuggle. Toby has calmed down considerably now and is friends with everyone. So miracles can happen.

I'm counting on it. So are my roos.