A question of sexing

So this morning I wake up rather early, but nowhere near as early as CSB, who is already in the kitchen listening to the morning news.
I greet him and ask if he wants to hear my dream.
He does not.
I have some bad news, he says. O dear, I think, what else could the pope do?
What? I ask.
I heard some noises in the chicken coop earlier.
Oh no, I say.
We have a rooster.
A rooster! Is that all? I thought a fox had gotten into the henhouse last night.
It must one of the new ones, but it’s unmistakably crowing.
I guess chicken sexing is not a perfect science, I say.

Later today I spend some quality time in the henhouse trying to discover and photograph the rooster in question.This is the result and no, he/she did not make any effort to stand still for the camera.
Last fall we got 24 new pullets, Rhode Island Reds, Buff Orpingtons and Ameraucanas. When you get that many chickens McMurray’s throws in a bonus exotic breed, also, presumably, a pullet. The sad news, on top of the bad news, is that it appears that the rooster and the exotic bird are one and the same. I don’t know exactly what kind he/she is, but – except for that white patch on the wattle – he looks like a Welsummer. Rather handsome too, I think.

This is a certified Welsummer rooster, from the Internet.

Departures

I did not count my chickens before they hatched. But I did count on chickens.
The latter was clearly no less foolish than the former. We incubated 25 eggs and 15 lovely exotic chicks emerged. When they were about a month old it became clear we had a rooster in the henhouse, Alonso. Alonso crowed his lonely doodle mornings and evenings. Eventually he was joined by Attila, and soon the duet went to Yonkers. Once they had departed, Tux started crowing and a while later he was joined by Snowflake. They too went to Yonkers to grace a stewpot. Once they were departed yet another rooster started crowing, a shy black and white thing (to remain unnamed for obvious reasons) that had not previously emitted a peep. And another and a third. About 2 weeks later they were named Sopa, Empanada and Rosti-Pollo.
Only then, in our depleted henhouse, did yet another rooster proclaim his masculinity, only then did he trumpet the testosterone flowing through his avian veins. He has handsome too, with a black and white striped scarf and iridescent green feathering.
He’s now gone, with 2 more cohorts. So from 15 eggs that hatched, we are left with 5 chickens of the hen-variety. And that is wishful thinking.

Alternative titles:
And No Cock Crew
With one Fell Swoop, from the Harem to the Nunnery
All's Quiet in the Henhouse
They Call me Sopa

The Great Chicken-Sex Question

Does this look like a rooster to you?

Cock-a-Doodle-Do-you-Hear-Me?

Two more roosters went to Yonkers yesterday, Tuxedo and Snowflake. That makes four out of the batch of 15 that incubated with the Hoffman boys back in April. What intrigues me is that we heard not a peep from Snowflake until long after Alonso's and Attila's departure for seasoned stewpots. Adios gallos.
And early this morning - though not as early as the crank phone call from the ex-wife - we were greeted with the crowing of yet another male of the avian species. His first crowing was scratchy and tentative, but within minutes he was up to speed and crowing away. Had the other roosters stayed would he have remained silent all along? Would he ever have challenged the supremacy of Alonso, the Alpha Rooster?

Meanwhile the younger chicks (all certifiably pullets) are getting bigger and need to join their older brethren in Clucker Hall. But they need to be introduced gradually into the hierarchy and this is tricky. You thought the politics of academia were cutthroat? Welcome to the henhouse.

On the chicken front

First we thought there were many roosters among the chickens (Annie F perceived several masculine features in the photos we sent her) but only Alonso crowed and so we thought he was the only one. Until a week ago when Alonso got competition. Attila (an opera by Verdi) started challenging Alonso's coop supremacy with a lovely baritone crow. And neither of them kept to any discernible schedule, so we were serenaded with cock-a-doodling on a regular basis, too regular for the neighbors.
Yesterday, Alonso and Attila went to meet their maker, in Yonkers.
Silence and feminine clucking prevailed in the coop. Until this morning when Tuxedo crowed. And crowed and crowed. And crowed some more. He is indeed now the rooster in the henhouse and wants us all to know it. Poor Tuxedo will be heading soon to Yonkers.

And yes, I know it is considered terrible poultry faux pas to name one's chickens, especially ones that will soon be known as Guisado de pollo.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that I need a solid eight hours of sleep, and if it is not universally acknowledged, it should be. Were it not for that universally acknowledged fact, nothing would please me more than to be awoken at 1 AM, as we were 2 nights ago, by flashing lights and voices in the driveway and the dogs barking at the excitement. You may well ask, What crisis prompted this intrusion upon our slumber? What imminent tornado, or census emergency, or political scandal, or fallen tree, or terrorist threat?
It seems someone across the street called the police to complain of the noise of barking dogs and alleged our dogs were the guilty ones.
But no, our dogs were fast asleep under our bed, inside our house. It was only when the police arrived, all a-clamor, that Daisy and Bruno set about barking. The local constabulary apologized but declined to tell us who it was that so glibly and wrongly accused our dogs of disturbance, and succeeded in disturbing us.
Then I couldn’t go back to sleep, because I was feeling persecuted. What so-called neighbor was falsely accusing us of harboring annoying canines? Had I done something to offend whoever it was? There are several other dogs around here, any of which could have been barking – though I had heard none. What made our accusers place the blame on floppy & benign D & B? And then, because it is a truth universally acknowledged that in the middle of the night small problems can inflate like a soufflé and multiply like fruit flies, I worried whether people who cause us to be awoken by the law in the middle of the night are the sort of people who find poultry objectionable. In the middle of the night, this does not seem so much a question as an implacable fact, and sleep was further postponed as I bemoaned the fate of poor Alonso the rooster. Currently, Alonso’s crowing is a mellow alto and allows me to fantasize that we live on Old MacDonald’s Farm. But soon it will grow into its full heavy-metal baritone, and I imagine that the neighbors will call out the National Guard.
Once I had imagined all the terrible things that could happen to the chickens, I started considering the problem of poison ivy. Then I began to itch, and of course the worse thing to do when your poison ivy itches is to scratch it, so I scratched it, because it was the middle of the night and I desperately wanted to fall back asleep. The scratching did not help. I have a pharmacopeia of putative remedies for poison ivy, including, but not limited to, Calamine lotion, Caladryl lotion, tincture of jewelweed, Zanfel, Technu, oatmeal baths, fermented llama urine, and Prednisone. And I considered them all as I lay awake. But the truth is that nothing works completely except almost boiling water. In fact, it is almost worth getting poison ivy to stand under a very hot shower and arrange for the water to hit the body parts afflicted with poison ivy. I am not sure how it works, but this not only relieves the itching but the hot water sets off a feeling of total pleasure, euphoria really.
It’s the sort of thing that makes me understand what it must be like to shoot heroine. Or makes me think I understand what it’s like. Or makes me imagine I understand, though it is unlikely I do.
After euphoria in the hot shower I returned to bed and read Barbara Pym.

Arctic Dreams and a rooster revealed

Today I pulled Barry Lopez’ Arctic Dreams from the shelf, because in September I will travel to the Arctic with my sister and a brother and sister-in-law, and I was told this was a must-read. And why the Arctic when the south of France still beckons? I ask myself that question. Because we like cold, bleak places and enormous skies? Because we want to lament the melting of the arctic ice cap? Because we want to chew on walrus blubber and experience scurvy first hand? All of the above. It was my copy of Arctic Dreams from the eighties, and if the dog-ears are any indication, I never finished it. When I opened it this morning, several papers drifted out: a ski trail map from Alta; a flyer from the Alta Powder Kids ski school ($14 a day for ages 6 and up); and a daily report from Powder Kids describing the progress made by a certain Tristram H in 1987. He was six and small for his age back then. His teacher described him as: “A good enthusiastic little boy”. He was ”having difficulty turning on black.” But he had “finished with edgy-wedgy”. I can’t remember the last time I – or anyone in my hearing – referred to an edgy-wedgy, but it is something to hope for is some mythical future.
Talk about Proustian madeleines. Just handling that wrinkly ski map & peering into the shaded expanse of the Black Diamond Greeley Bowl, where I valiantly tried to keep up with my then-husband and his brothers, is enough to bring on vertigo and frostbitten toes. But to remember young Tristram as he fell in love with powder skiing, as he hurled himself fearlessly from the top of the mountain and raced down heedless of the dimly-heard maternal shouts to Be Careful and Slow Down, as he dipped behind a child-swallowing mogul and never emerged, as he imitated Eddie the Eagle, the English ski jumper who solidly came in last in every competition, as he dangled his legs off the edge of the chair lift and in the process so terrified his mother that I begged strangers to ride up with him, brings on only happiness.
I could make a case here for ‘real’ books (as opposed to Kindles, Nooks, Snooks or Swindles) because they afford this possibility for unleashing memories. But I will refrain, because it is so obvious.

In other news, the chickens are now outside in their yard, pecking the ground, dashing around, clucking, and in one significant case, crowing. This morning I heard my first real cock-a-doodle do, and I was strangely moved. My own rooster! Yes, it is he-who-shall-remain-unnamed, with the bluish black feathers and the many pointed comb and incipient wattle.
I think he is either a Black Orpington or a Black Austrolorp, but I am still not sure. I am however, very sure that he is a he.

The continuance of gender confusion

Gender confusion is still the abiding theme at Clucker Hall. I sent some pictures to our friend, Annie Farrell, the farming guru, and she wrote back cheerfully that it looks like we have lots of roosters. I’m not sure who should be cheerful about this, certainly not the roosters. (Any roosters that previously had names are now being referred to as Fricassee, Stew, and Coq au Vin). How could she tell? Apparently the comb on roosters will be prominent, as will the spurs on the back of their legs. And there are several chicks out there with combs looking very prominent. Including the He-who-was-formerly-Fez, I am sad to say. According to our handy Guide to Backyard Chickens, there are several types of combs, including: single, strawberry, walnut, cushion, buttercup, V-shaped and rose.

This morning as I sipped my tea in Clucker Hall with the chicks pecking at gravel, I thought I heard a tentative cock-a-doodle-doo. Annie told us the first tries would sound scratchy & even hoarse. In a flash, I was reminded of those halcyon days of my son’s puberty – back when the mere word puberty would make him blush and run for cover – when his voice started cracking. For months I thought he was plagued with a sore throat and incipient laryngitis; I plied him with throat lozenges. When his friends called on the phone they sounded like their fathers, i.e. men not boys. Then one morning my son opened his mouth and he was a baritone, wandering through the lower registers like a lost soul in the desert.

Here is Whiskers perched and alert. Doesn’t she look like a mother? And I still have hopes that Bump is a hen; because of her feathery hairdo I can’t see the prominence or lack of prominence of her comb. CSB, being rather conservative in the matter of hair fashion, would just as soon she was a rooster.

Colman's Helpful Pets

There are guide dogs and companion potbelly pigs and bomb-sniffing honeybees; there are dogs who will bring you your slippers and a dead squirrel, and cats who will bring you a dead bird; and all of these are very useful pets. But Saint Colman of Kilmacdough (Irish, 7th century) had three rather unusually useful helpers.
First there was the cock who awoke him early each morning to pray his night office.
Then there was the mouse who kept him from falling asleep while he prayed his night office.
Then there was the fly who acted as his bookmark, keeping his place in the missal.

How did the mouse keep him awake, you well may ask. The legend does not elaborate.