Do You Hear What I Hear?

           Because hens of the same breed often look too much alike to tell apart, we don't name all of our chickens. We named our first rooster (the one who got killed by the coyotes) Rudy. He was the only rooster, and a big Black/Lav split Ameraucana, so that was easy enough.

 

           Rudy's offspring were crossbreeds and very distinctive looking, so they got names. The hens became Penguin and Babs. His son (the rooster we just got rid of) was about nine different colors and patterns, so we had named him Pinto. There were two other roosters in that hatching. I traded them away for three Barred Rock hens.

          We got three chicks out of Pinto (at least he was good for something) that each have their own look. Two were hatched about sixteen weeks ago. There was a little black chick with a white mark on it's head that we named Ninette (after my wife Nina) since it was a small dark-haired girl with a yarmulke on. The other one was mostly grey, and very protective of Ninette when we brought in more chicks from the Davidson Farmers Co-op. Nina had suspicions that it might be a rooster, but we weren't sure, so we named it Izzy...izzy a rooster, or izzy a hen?

            Ninette has grown into a beautiful bird, with Rudy's coloring on most of her body and very striking black and white patterning on her head and neck. Izzy looks more and more like a Barred Rock everyday.
           The third chick that we got from Pinto was hatched seven weeks ago as a pure platinum blond, but has started taking on very cool brown markings that resemble those of Ameraucana chicks. We had named her Sabrina, although now we wonder about her gender since intricate patterning and coloring is often the sign of a rooster.
                           

         That's her on the far right in the picture.
         With the law of averages on our side, we figured that one of the three would be a rooster, thus replacing their jerk of a father. (Heck, with our luck, they would all three be roosters.) If not, there are always folks trying to get rid of roosters.
         We're expecting the young hens (not the youngest ones) to start laying in a couple more weeks.
         This morning, I unlocked the coop and let them out into the yard. Izzy looked at me, flapped HIS wings, and said "urt-da-urt-da-urrrr". Then he repeated himself to make sure I got the message that there's a new rooster in the barnyard now. Here's to hoping he's friendlier than his father...and that Ninette and Sabrina are girls.

Flock This!

     I decided to retire the homemade incubator yesterday morning. It was a fun project, but the return is just not worth the energy I've been investing in it. The first batch of eggs was great...eight eggs in and six chicks out. Other attempts have not been so fruitful...twelve eggs in and two chicks out, and on the last time around, eight eggs in and only two chicks out. (One of those was born seemingly healthy, but started having seizures and died about 22 hours after hatching. It's parents were siblings, which I was told is okay, but there was obviously something wrong with it.) The remaining chick is a beautiful little platinum blonde. Chickens are flock animals, and we didn't want her (we're hoping it's a "her") to be lonesome.
     The last time we hatched and only got two, I went to the Davidson County Farmers' Co-op and bought three baby chicks. They usually have a limited selection...Buff Orpingtons and either Barred Rocks or Rhode Island Reds. We already had two adult RIRs and one adult Buff, so I picked up one Red and two Buffs. They have formed a nice little flock of their own.

    
     Chicks are a seasonal thing at the co-op, and they don't always have them on hand for a lonesome baby chick emergency such as ours, so I took to Craigslist in search of companionship (for the chicken. I already have all the companionship I could desire.) Saturday morning on a holiday weekend is apparently not the ideal time to attempt communications with chicken breeders, but I located some fellows outside of Murfreesboro (about an hour away) who said they had fresh hatchlings and would be happy to assist in my endeavors. I took a ride, which led me to this house...

   ...which looks quite a bit different with every kind of chicken you could imagine (and some you never dreamed of) running all over the yard. It turns out that the house used to belong to Grand Ol' Opry star Uncle Dave Macon "The Dixie Dewdrop", and is still the destination of many a wayfaring banjo player on a pilgrimage to the roots of country music.

           The guys at the house had several varieties of chicks that had been born within the week, and they said that I could have whatever I wanted for $5 apiece. I had stopped at the ATM, and had a $20 bill on me, so I figured I'd pick up four chicks and head home. Tom (I think that was his name) went in the house and came out with a box full of assorted chicks...Ameraucanas, Speckled Sussex, Cochin, Polish, and Orpingtons. We have some Ameraucana blood in our flock (our new hatchling is one quarter), but no purebreds, so I was thinking about maybe getting four of those, but Tom and Cody were excited about the different breeds and their enthusiasm must have been contagious. I told them that I would take one of each except for the Orpingtons (which are already well-represented in our flock). That's when they told me the Sussex chicks were $10. I told them I had $20, and would just take four of whatever. They decided that I needed the Sussex chick so bad that they gave it to me for half-price.
     Before I got in the car, I started telling them about my music (I'm bad about that) and gave them a copy of my "One More Night In Nashville" CD...at which point they said "Here. Have another chicken." It was another Ameraucana, which when spoken out loud sounds almost exactly like the genre into which my music so often gets categorized.
     Coincidence? I don't think so.
     The baby we hatched (on the far right in the picture at the bottom of the page) is no longer lonesome, and the new flock is melding well. That's a good thing, because lonesome works way better in a country song than it does in a chicken coop.

Any Cock'll Do? Not According To Our Hens.

         

 

          Well, we solved the too-many-roosters dilemma.
          We had hatched some eggs from our hens before the coyote attack known as "The Great Chicken Massacree Of Twenty And Fourteen". The daddy rooster was an Ameraucana Black/Lav Split. We had three different kinds of hens...Barred Rock, Buff Orpington, and Rhode Island Red. I built a homemade incubator out of a small Styrofoam cooler and a lightbulb, and put eight eggs in it.

          Six of them hatched. They were pretty danged cute.

          We lost one of the babies on the night of the coyote attack. The other five have grown to be beautiful birds. Unfortunately, three of the five turned out to be roosters. Along with the four pullets I bought at the Davidson Country Co-op, we had six hens and three roosters. That's not a desirable ratio at all. At least one, and most likely two, of the roosters had to go.

          Neither Nina nor I had any experience killing and cleaning chickens, but she told me that if I could kill one, she could clean it. That was the plan. I started studying on how to implement it. I could kill one easily enough, but the rest of the process seemed like an awful lot of work (and supplies) unless you were doing multiple chickens. I know people have killed a chicken for dinner on countless occasions, so it had to be easier than all the YouTube videos made it out to be. The other problem was that they were such beautiful birds that it almost seemed a shame to eat them. I started looking on Craigslist for people who were in the market for roosters.
          We were hoping to find someone who would give a rooster a good home and some hens to keep happy. Since the roosters carried the "Easter Egger" gene, we thought it would be easy enough to find someone who would want them. We were willing to give them away to good homes. As it turns out, there are a lot of people with way more roosters than they need. We also heard horror stories of people who collected free birds to use as bait for fighting dogs. One of our greatest fears was that somebody might use them for fighting roosters since they were pretty big birds.

          I found an ad for a fellow who said he was at the Triune Flea Market every weekend with about six hundred birds of different kinds. He also said that he was interested in buying birds. It's about forty-five minutes away, but I drove down there to talk to him yesterday morning. I didn't take the roosters with me. It was more of a seeing-what's-up kind of excursion. He wasn't there when I got there, but I did talk to two other people who had birds. Both told me to bring the roosters down and we could see about swapping for some hens. One guys birds looked kind of ratty, and he wasn't overly-friendly. The other fellow had some nice looking birds, and he also seemed to be a pretty nice guy...just a good old boy loving life. I told him I'd come back this morning.
          We were having trouble trying to decide which rooster to keep. Two of the roosters looked almost identical, and one of those two was huge. It was a toss-up between him and the third rooster, who is one of the most exotically-colored chickens I have ever seen. The hens decided for us. We went out after dark last night (the best time to catch chickens) and opened up the henhouse. The two hens were sleeping almost on top of the exotically-colored boy, while the other two roosters were perched away from the group with their backs to the door. The first one was a pretty easy snatch. I grabbed him up and dropped him into the dog crate that we had borrowed from the neighbors. Unfortunately, that caused a ruckus in the henhouse, so we had to wait an hour to go snag the second rooster. They spent the night in the dog crate on the front porch. This morning we were treated (?) to stereo-crowing.
          When I got back to Triune this morning, all of the vendors were raving over the roosters, and wanting to know if I had any more like that. I said "One...but he's staying with us." The guy who I traded with told me that he thought whoever bought them would want them for yard roosters. In fact, he told me that he was keeping one for himself. I felt pretty good about that. He was going to trade me straight up for two adult hens that were already laying, but he told me that if I wanted some slightly younger pullets, he would give me three. I took three Barred Rocks that are right around the age of our younger chickens, who are three weeks younger than the ones we hatched. He told me to come back any time.
          We now have nine hens and one rooster...a much better ratio. 
          I think everybody's happy.

Small World Tour: Day 1

SMALL WORLD TOUR...DAY ONE: Wednesday morning we said "hasta la vista" to Sadie dog, the chickens, and the homestead, and left them in the capable hands of our trusty caretaker. We pulled out on the road on the tail end of rush hour and headed east in the Nissan Versa tour bus to the strains of Tom Russell's "The Rose Of The San Joaquin" CD. The weather was beautiful, traffic was light, cruising was easy. One gas stop, three rest areas, and a Bojangle's later, we pulled into Garner, North Carolina, hometown of "American Idol's" Scotty McCreery, and the town where I spent my high school years dreaming about being anywhere else but. Hugged my mama's neck and visited for a little bit.
We left there,and went to gas up again. While I was pumping, a fellow walked up and asked about my license plate.
"Tennessee" I told him.
"Whereabouts?" he asked.
"Nashville."
"Nashville? Do you know a guy named Cal Freeman?"
It turns out I do. Cal played pedal steel for Gatemouth Brown at the same time my friend Joe Sunseri was Gate's sax man. Cal had lived in Garner for a spell. I told this fellow that I had been to Cal's house when he lived locally. The guy says "I was his roommate. I remember you. You had a song about seeing red." I guess he did remember me. Small world.
Then we headed into Raleigh to the Berkeley Cafe, a place I have played a million times. Steve Howell and I were (some of, if not) the first musicians to play there. We had a "do-grass bluo" called The Lonesome Hound Dog Whales that played some original songs at a poetry reading there, prompting then-owner John Blomquist to start up a musician's open mic. The Berkeley has recently been bought and completely renovated by the owner of the recently closed and sadly missed Sadlack's Heroes. (Another place I have played a bunch,) Mike Spence and Rickey Bacchus were at their stations behind the bar. Bill Hickman was serving up his Wednesday Night Taco Special. Open Mic was in full swing. I went out and played a few songs for the hardcores on the back patio while awaiting my turn to perform.
Debbie Baggett and Jennifer Sanders were there. It was almost like Old Home Week(night). I played my allotted three songs "You Done Done It Now", "Inside That Box", and "My Dog Jesus". By popular demand, I played one more...A singalong of "What's Not To Love?". It was kick playing in the Berkeley again after so many years.
After a few more hugs and handshakes, we headed off for some much needed sleep.