CityView Magazine

12 | September 2020 T he loss of my favorite bird dog last winter was sad, but no shock. irteen years is blessing aplenty. I don't know how many times people have asked if I have gotten back into the puppy business. e answer is "no." I just have not had the desire for a new dog, given the wounding that comes when that companioning ends. Instead, we opted for chickens. is is not our first soiree into the world of raising poultry. e most famous episode in our chicken- rearing history was when we held a fundraiser at church – the Great Chicken Race. We set up a circular racetrack into which we introduced several young pullet sprinters. We named them things like Cacciatori, Cordon Bleu, and Tetrazzini. e confines of the track and one human bringing up the rear kept them moving in the desired direction. It is the only way to successfully herd chickens. is time, Hudson brought home a dozen peeps from Family Farms store. ere are not many things sweeter than a newly hatched chicken. We would set up a little enclosure of (predictably) chicken wire in the backyard and encircle it with beach and lawn chairs. We spent many a COVID-quarantined aernoon as a family sipping something cold and laughing at the antics of the peeps picking grass and jockeying for position around the feed trough. Always there is a weakling. Nature's way. Ours was identified in very short order and expired naturally in a day or two. Another inevitability to buying peeps is that there will always be a rooster that slips through the sexing process. In our very first time raising chickens, we just accepted the fact and allowed the rooster to grow right on up with his sisters. Roosters are three things – visually impressive, territorially aggressive and obnoxiously loud. at first generation of peeps produced a beautiful, angry, vociferous rooster that ruled the backyard. MCFADYEN'S MUSINGS Dumber Than A Chicken One day our Little Maggie and Sweet Emma were playing in the backyard when mama Kelley McCauley came to fetch her daughter. Her son, Shep, came with her, opened his car door and sauntered over to the girls at the sandbox, thereaer finding himself in a stare down with Big Red. Shep stomped at the bird just to remind him who the human was. Unimpressed and duly challenged, that rooster sailed into Shep like a schooner in a gale, inspiring a screaming retreat on the part of the human. I think Red got three or four pecks into Shep's calves before the car door slammed back again. Shep peered out the car window as a now-slightly-taller Red resumed his role as head bully of the hen harem. Red also refused to abide by the rule of crowing at dawn's early light. Oh, he did that every day. It is just that he never stopped. All day long, every time he saw a hen – which was all the time – he bellowed. e other thing about Red (and roosters in general I suppose) is that his breeding habit was very predictable. It was cyclical and the cycle was about every 10 minutes. Our backyard became a feathered brothel of perpetual copulation. e combined affronts of the incessant sexual activity, the noisemaking, and the attacking of children only 12 times his size meant Red had to go. As a result of my multiple purchases from Cumberland Tractor, I was aware that their old location was constantly at risk of thievery, especially on weekends. So, one Sunday aernoon, I gied Charlie and Ronald McCullough with their very own guard rooster by chunking him over and into their fence. As I looked back in the rearview mirror, I could see Red whooping the hell out of a zero-turn lawn mower. When the latest round of peeps turned into juveniles, it was obvious that there was indeed one among their ranks that would eventually usurp my authority over the backyard. With Cumberland Tractor having relocated and, during the move, upgrading their outside security, there was no demand for a guard rooster. Instead, this future feathered terrorist assumed a spot in the food chain directly below that place held by me before he could peck any human calves. With only a few weeks remaining before this new round of 10 hens begins producing eggs for our consumption, the only real problem we have is their penchant to wander. Apparently, our multiple acres are not sufficient. ey have coveted and molested the next-door neighbors' shrubbery, or at least the pine straw underneath it. Having severely constricted their amount of time outside the coop as a result, our hope was that they would use the time wisely and concentrate on scratching under our loropetalums and blackberry bushes and bird feeders. It was like trusting Eve at the apple tree. So, this morning, having found them crossing the property line and heading to the Forbidden Fruits, Susanna and I re-enacted By Bill McFadyen

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