Exploring the vagaries of roosterhood.
Photo Above by Bruce Ingram | Photo styling by Janette Spencer.
Elaine and I have two flocks of Rhode Island Reds in adjoining runs, and every week both coops have to be cleaned. With our grandsons Sam and Eli living across the hollow, we frequently call on the boys to help us with removing the voluminous amounts of manure chickens create weekly.
As such, the boys have a sense of ownership with our birds, and with that ownership comes such perks as naming the chicks. Last summer when it was clear that some of the chicks were males because of their larger feet, feistier nature and larger, redder combs and wattles, Sam and Eli dubbed two of the males Boots and Ruffles. The former received his name because of his clodhopper-type feet and the latter because he seemed to ruffle his feathers constantly.
As is the way of life in a chicken run, only one rooster is needed to service the hens and produce the next generation of chicks. It’s also a truism that more than one rooster in a run … means unending skirmishes and skittish hens tormented by the unending—shall I say—attentiveness of the libido-driven young roosters.
It was of no great matter to the boys when the two unnamed brethren of Boots and Ruffles became Sunday dinners. And with the regal Tom reigning in Coop I, Ruffles (noticeably smaller than Boots) eventually had his inevitable date with the to-be slow cooker.
A few days later when Sam (Eli was ill at the time) came over to help clean coops, he innocently inquired where Ruffles was? I gave a litany of reasons why I decided to opt for Boots as the future breeding male, but Sam’s constant tearful reply for each point was “Ruffles was mine, I named him. Eli named Boots.” A factoid that I was unaware of.
Elaine and I have constantly strived to treat the now 11-year-old Sam and his 9-year-old brother equally. All Christmas present hauls must be roughly the same value, and wages for chores completed are always the same no matter what the particular task was. Sam, feeling slighted, spent the rest of the morning sniffling as he bravely tried to put on a masculine front that all was well.
When I explained to Elaine what had transpired, she sagely said, “I don’t know how you’re going to get out of this one. There’s no getting around the fact that he feels you killed his rooster.”
I thought a great deal about the situation and when both grandsons came over the next week to help clean the runs, I had my speech planned.
“Eli, did Sam tell you that I had to kill Ruffles?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
“Guys, I don’t ever enjoy killing any of our chickens that we’ve raised since they were chicks, but sometimes, I have to. We can’t have more than one rooster in a run, or there will be non-stop fighting. Roosters will sometimes kill each other. And once, we even had one rooster kill a hen from mating with her too much and fighting over her.
“Yes, we love our chickens, and it’s important that we take good care of them. But they aren’t pets like Max [the boys’ dog]. We would never kill Max, right, unless he were old and sick, right?”
Both boys quickly agreed with the premise that Max would never be put down unless he were suffering.
“So you understand that the chickens aren’t pets like Max is a pet,” I continued. “Sometimes granddaddy has to do what’s best for the whole flock, and that means sometimes I have to kill a chicken that isn’t sick because that’s what’s best for the other birds. Do you all understand that?”
Both grandsons said they did, and I think and hope they really did. Sometimes being a granddaddy is almost as hard as being a daddy. As Elaine said later, not all lessons are happy ones.
The story above first appeared in our July / August 2024 issue.
