Herman stew or cock-a-doodle-do

I live on a five-acre ranch and have always owned a few horses and dogs. Last year I decided it would be a learning experience for my husband and me if we bought a few chickens that could lay eggs. No more eating store bought eggs! “Ranch wives have chicken coops and gather their own eggs,” I told Greg and promised that not over a dozen or so would be bought. But alas, the baby chicks were incredibly cute, and before I knew it there were forty-nine total; chicks that quickly grew into two roosters and forty-seven hens. The chicken lady told me my chicks were ALL female. She obviously guessed wrong.

Greg quickly converted one of the three stalls in our barn into a chicken coop, complete with laying boxes, perches, plenty of straw…and endless chicken poop. In fact, birds have no problem pooping everywhere, including their five-gallon water bucket. Ugh!

I’m happy to announce today that it has indeed been a worthwhile venture. How else would I have learned about roosters killing other roosters, dogs chasing and killing chickens for sport, hungry vicious coyotes and fox, that skunks and mink can dig under your barn into a coop and tear your hens to pieces, that snakes favorite meals are baby chicks, that chickens can drown in a horse trough, that red lights are needed in the winter to keep chickens warm AND from eating their own eggs, and last but not least, that chickens can just plain disappear and no one other than God himself knows where they’ve gone?

When spring finally came, I proudly announced to the same chicken lady when I was buying more chicks…that I counted myself lucky to have fourteen hens left and one cocky rooster named, Herman. (Herman murdered George one day when I was out hunting rocks.)

  

Here were my choices when I realized that Herman was a crazy unpredictable Casanova in the hen house, and that he could no longer live among my egg layers. His first and only love was to chase those hens and…cock-a-doodle-do…you get the picture. What a pain! He could both lose his head and end up in my stew pot. Keep in mind I had no idea who would have butchered him; it wouldn’t have me. In a crisis situation I might get through the plucking and gutting part, but not the killing (I named every chicken). Or Herman could fend for himself in the open. I turned him out of the hen house to roam to his heart’s content, knowing that by doing so, he would probably get carried off in the dead of night and eaten.

Imagine how surprised I was when some hungry daring little creature didn’t eat Herman that first night, or the night after that? Herman made himself a nest outside, where my fox trotter and her filly are fenced. He kept safe by sleeping with the horses. Smart bird…my boy Herman. It has now been four months. Herman waits for me every morning and walks me to his feed bowl. If I don’t get there soon enough he starts pecking my legs, and I have to drop the bucket and run…but most mornings, he and I get along just fine.