flock its
methinks i placed two of my three chicken coops in a very foolish location. by the pre-covid plan those two coops are placed in a space easily observed from the education/business center. as the covidic yaddah blahs evolved, the rustic old farmhouse is substandard living quarters for our farm assistant (fa) and her family. three years later, with little hope of getting that dream past the covidic yaddah blahs, those two coops are now in her yard and she doesnae much like chickens. she strongly favors pursuing commercial production where the industry is kept as far as possible from her potted plants, etc. NIMBY a la hispanic caribean.
those two coops have been under heavy predator attack lately. again. i've already lost two flocks to this scenario. the third coop is near enough to the new house that it is easily guarded from the porch. ditto for the other two coops from the old farmhouse, but fa wants no part of that scheme. she has treated predator attacks as opportunities to campaign for the more established chicken factory methods of her country. chicken factories are pretty much the same world wide. i suspect the chicken factories of her country arenae far different than those of my country. i donae care to own one of those inhumane, environmentally damaging atrocities, thank you, kindly. no aquellas de su pais ni de mia.
today i used masking tape to hide the "eggs" hubby and fa painted on their sign down by the road. tonight i left the doors open on the two coops in fa's yard in hopes of losing those two flocks sooner. they are doomed and i see no sense in dragging out the agony any longer than necessary.
back to the drawing board.
Replies
the decision to close down the 2 front coops seems to be holding steady. this morning's mental chatter is over how to respond when fa renews her quest to get me into commercial chicken keeping practices. she really, really wants me to embrace those practices. i remain convinced her view of those operations is pure socially distant city kid. she's seen it on tv and tourist post cards de su pais. ALL of her suggestions are of what **i** should do. her offers of help are strictly limited to complaints of chicken shit on her possessions. methinks my next response to her ongoing counsel will be a straight translation of the line i draw with her english speaking counterparts. i am not discussing this with you, fur mama. the decision is made. let it go. go tend your housecat. okay, okay. . . the fur baby dialogue is still too new in spanish for easy translation of "fur mama." i'm not discussing this with you, city kid. methinks i will extend that boundary to all birds. our views of wild birds are as different as our views of industrial chicken keeping and electric lights. those conversations are frustrating, at best.
as i pull my attention from that crisis, i work to resume contemplation of my own city girl psychopations toward harvesting of the flocks.
small steps, big faith and lots of prayer. letting god lead the dance.
my psychopatious worry about fa's reaction to closing down the front coop has spun into the linguistic snot knot of "los gringos no se puedan." ALL of our discussions of birds have been in spanish. i haven't discussed birds much in spanish. her experience with birds is too limited to fill in the blanks. i have been learning the vocabulary through my usual language study methods as our dialog has progressed. she has been better than most in enforcing the prohibition against gringos speaking spanish, but there are enough traces that i am expecting the snot knot cliche that my disagreement is based on the linguistic inferiority of my skin color. why else would i disagree with their all-knowing wisdom?
los gringos no se puedan.
i'm anticipating, of course. plying therapy tools. what will be will be.
the hardest part of loving animals is watching them die. humans are one of the longer lived species on the planet. for a chicken, two years is quite old. by four years, they are living with the full geriatric load of aches and pains. the golden years arenae so golden for a chicken. the oldest of the chickens in the two coops i have decided to shut down are approaching 2 years. the youngest were hatched in this past august. at present, the oldest of the 12 (plus or minus) roosters are from this past summer. the older roosters were among the first to fall to the predators currently attacking the coops. there are many, many critters in nature that love a good chicken dinner. their babies need to eat, too.
girl howdy, i'm psychopating like a prom queen with a broken nail over the loss of these two flocks. be they skin babies, fur babies, feather babies, exoskeleton babies or scale babies, it hurts me to watch babies die. when i can do nothing to prevent the deaths, my herstory is to target my pain and anger at the most convenient spots. my subliminal arguments with fa are a perfect example. 20 minute wonders who know their grandma made ^it^ look easy or how THEY did ^it^ in their country are, herstorically, my favorite targets for this mistargeted anger and pain. when i am emotionally stable, i try to treat these 20 minute wonders like children, patiently educating them about their certainties. well, dear, not all chickens lay eggs every day. young children are far easier to educate than adult 20 minute wonders, but it is often easier to change the subject with mature adults. adult children are often more difficult, but. . . different thread. fa is a mature adult. i suspect that i will be able to set a boundary to keep her 20 minute expertise off of my pain.
the piece of this psychopatious business as usual i am challenging this morning is how i handle these episodes with hubby. herstorically, i increase social distances with him and carry my anger and pain to my psychotherapy network. his idea of emotional support is to ? ? ? alas, i have no clear words for ^it^. distract me with some rousing rounds of domestic tit for tat? by whatever words, ^it^ hurts like a daddy dick.
but methinks we have made progress on this ugly piece of our family dysfunction. during the weeks i have been conflicted with this unfortunate series of events, hubby has been doing remarkably well at listening instead of resorting to his own business as usual. alas, the effort he has needed to accomplish this miracle is a bit too evident for my comfort. i remain braced for another round of business as usual and fearful that my venting could trigger another round of tit for tat at the next poorly considered word. i find it more trouble than it is worth to attempt marshalling grammar and venting emotions simultaneously.. part of the reason i am so good at multi-tasking is that i have some clues of when NOT to.
sorting. . .
what will be will be. thy will be done.
the thought loops of fa's adamant opinions on how i should manage my flocks continue. the distress isnae over her enthusiastic ignorance any more that similar thought loops have been about geriatric grandchildren whose grandma made it look easy or the next generation who watched it on youtube. the thought loops are mere evasion of my own ignorance on how to harvest the flocks or at least put suffering animals out of their misery. i would dearly love to conversate with one of those long dead grandmothers or one of fa's countrymen who have done this work with their own hands. streaming the sterile digits of youtube hasn't helped much. i would equally cherish conversation with a youtube enthusiast who carried their learning into real time action. none of those seem to be available, so here i am, spinning anxiety thought loops to distract myself from the pain of my own ignorance. willfully allowing herstory to repeat itself in the closing of the front coops doesnae feel like an adequate solution.
my first step away from the subliminal harangue against enthusiastic ignorance is my lifelong go-to of just giving up. yet another bad idea from the psychotic halls of the beaten crazy bitch wolf. my own cruelty to animals isnae any less cruel than the practices of the meat and egg factories fa enthusiastically promotes. maybe. the birds in the meat and egg factories live their entire lives without ever seeing the light of day. the factory housewives never have to clean chicken shit off their precious possessions. how very civilized. the youtube videos i have watched of professional chicken processing donae make their sterile deaths look any less terrifying than a non-human predator attack.
giving up doesnae feel right, either. birds, both wild and domestic, call me.
the most established task in fa's employment here is cleaning the house twice a week. monday's cleaning started with her having taken note of the later opening of the front coops to prevent the early morning coyote attacks which have been happening. i told her i didnae care to talk about ^it^. she assumed i was finally coming to my senses and taking up the industrial approach she so adores. "es lo mejor." her satisfaction solidified my decision to quit keeping chickens so close to the many precious thing piles she has surrounded the old farmhouse with. if the old farm compound is destined to be a commercial center, it willnae happen any time soon. for now i am only keeping pets in a contentious neighbor's yard. back to the drawing board on that piece of the design.
in the projective nature of my intrusive thoughts, i am anticipating that fa will begin this morning's cleaning with questions of the sudden turn toward leaving the coops open 24/7. the most recurring answer in this subliminal drama is to have her refresh my memory of her hands on experience with birds, in general. not the experience de su pais, sino de ud. de sus propias manos. ?de donde viene estes consejos que esta promoviendo con tanta certeza?
herstorically speaking, these conversations donae ever pan out the way my projections predict. it seems to work much better when i back off of the thought loops and pray for guidance.
god, please give me the words to get fa's opinions out of this psycho snot knot.
please help me to see my next step in my call to listen to the birds.
I stand with you Arfie that you will have just the right words for the fa. You know my life motto, follow your heart. Losing animals that are dear to you is really hard ((hug)). You are very strong and won't let anyone's (the fa) opinion dictate to you.....
You've got this! Hang in there.
thank you, mel. encouragement sorely needed and appreciated.
losing animal that are dear to you. . .
methinks this very sentiment gleaned from decades of animal therapy might be the heart and soul of the psycho snot knot which has me paralyzed on harvesting the flocks.
predating the current predator crisis was the crisis of having 14 roosters for three chicken flocks. the hens are experiencing gang rape as the boys turn fertilization into a team sport. i believe this is the reason the hens have quit laying. for certain, it is an ugly, chaotic show to witness. it is almost as brutal as watching the flock cannibalize the elder flockmates when the geriatric aches and pains set in somewhere between two and four years of age.
among the few pearls of wisdom i managed to glean from those grandmas who made it look easy is, "ya don't name food." if such a possibility had even occurred to them, they might have added, "ya doesn't bond with them, neither." would it be politically correct to translate this as professional detachment?
pushing past the subliminal, highly redundant arguments with the armchair quarterbacks of the avian world. . .
14 roosters for 3 flocks of hens is producing a cruel show. i strongly suspect the grandmas who made it look easy would have had 11 (gotta leave one rooster per flock) nummy rooster dinners by now, one meal at a time. well. . . these roosters are big birds. my current family of five can get several meals out of a single one of them. i have managed to serve up two of my roosters which were nummy beyond belief. it was nummy enough that it was hard to believe it was the same species as the cellophane wrapped birds i pull from the grocery store fridge. i served up one of the four copper marin roosters i harvested in 2020 but it was one foul fowl. yo. . . grandma who made it look easy. . . what did i do wrong? the pelts look and smell pretty foul, also. the feathers are still nice, but only nice. i get the bacterial heebeegeebees from handling them. i am still drawn to those feather pelts. why ask why? they call. that's all.
i havenae kept score, but i am quite certain it has been more than 11 weeks since the roosters from the summer brooding season started their telltale songs. all i have to do is slit a throat, cut a few lines in a chicken skin, do some gutting, and quit squirming like a city kid.
i have yet to eat one of my hens. i still name each one and havenae the heart to slit their throats when they fall ill. it is fare more humane to let them fall to the brutality of natural causes. it's a real joy to be pecked to death and cannibalized by your sisters.
i managed to push past the subliminal arguments with armchair quarterbacks --en todos idioma-- and set the stage for moving five of the 6 roosters from the back coop into the newer of the front coops. after the other chickens leave the roost in the morning i will open the cage in which i plan to move them and then shut the coop. to trap them in so that they donae return to the back coop. i am braced for a brutal proof that cock fighting is an all-natural sport. the fact is, i donae know what will happen. so far, i'm still running on digital wisdom where roosters are concerned.
testing, 1, 2, 3. . .
in actual fact, it was fa's idea to try isolating the roosters together instead of killing them. round one of testing that theory in a small pen where i could watch the action resulted in dramatic cockfights. i'm feeling wickedly grateful this round will be closer to fa's bedroom window than mine. given how much i'm psychopating over the notion of slitting throats, etc., i don't really mind much if they kill one another.
step one is done. the five surplus roosters from the back coop are in the large pet carrier in the front coop where i plan to release them to the closed coop later this morning. i am predicting a bloody day ahead, but only predicting from the chaos of conflicting folklore, both virtual and real time. we see what grows.
meanwhile, this morning's predawn meditations were considerably quieter here in the back without the competitive rooster crows. the gentle, young marin rooster i chose to be the flock cock has yet to be heard from this morning. i am hopeful --just hoping-- that egg production in the back coop will return to normal with the removal of the competing roosters.
side note
no sign of renewed predator attacks since i began leaving to doors on the front coops open at night.
as predicted, the cock fights have begun. the five roosters i moved last night were already bloodied when i released them from the pet carrier. the six free roosters are joining the fun by circling the coop containing the 5 trapped roosters, fighting them through the hardwire grid of the coop whenever they take a break from fighting each other. sigh. . . i'm still not ready for the realities of cutting throats and taking pelts, but i am still sighing wistfully at the beautiful feathers currently in the process of mutilation. they may be mean and contrary, but they are pretty babies.
next i will move 11 of the hens from the front coops to the back coop to fill it to capacity.
small steps, big faith and lots of prayer. . .
Magnify the victories to lessen the pain of the challenges. Here's to "no sign of renewed predator attacks".
Love it: small steps, big faith
thank you, mel. encouragement both needed and appreciated. magnifying the victories does, indeed, lessen the pain of the challenges.
i mostly see the predator attacks as beyond my control. whether the predator is a stray fur baby or a human predator, predators will hunt. it's their nature/nurture. i only get to control my response to their encroachment. i have looked into buying a firearm, but have yet to buy one for a rather long and cliché list of excuses. in the back coop, the human presence is enough to discourage the predators. there is not much human presence around the front coops and, for now, i am at a loss as to how to change that.
the victory i am celebrating here is pushing past the psychic paralysis. the reduction in head noise has been a relief beyond measure.
the benefit i am reaping as i type is the sweet silence of zero rooster crows outside my door. with the absence of competition from his brothers, the gentle young marin rooster i left in the back coop has been mostly silent. silence really can be golden.
the 11 hen move went smooth as kismet. so far. now we have to wait and see if the back flock accepts its new members and if the new members are willing to be assimilated. the 11 were calm inside the pet carrier after the flock left for their morning rounds. their exit from the carrier was equally calm. the established flock appears more curious about the newcomers than offended by the closed door on their coop.
i reckon the former brood house is now a rooster house. this time of year, the children board their school bus while it is still dark out. this morning i found the confidence to take advantage of that dark hour to move four of the loose roosters into the rooster house. that leaves three loose roosters for the remaining 15 or so hens. still two more than i believe is healthy for the hens.
of the 14 roosters from the summer brooding, there is only one white rooster and he is quite eye catching. his demeanor is gentle and dignified. i believe he is the rooster i wish to leave for the girls. is it racist of me to want to give reproductive rights to the big white guy?
egg production has resumed to nearer to what i would expect for the weeks approaching the spring equinox. a decline in egg production is to be expected during the short days of winter, but not to the extent it has fallen under the rooster gang rule.
and i am still psychopating like a trigger warning fur mama over what to do with the 10 roosters currently caged in the rooster house. finding homes for a litter of cute fur babies is nothing compared to finding homes for 10 contrarian roosters. i bet not even a no-kill animal shelter would take them.
and still i admire those beautiful feather pelts. free range chicken meat is so tender and juicy that it is hard to believe it comes from the same species as the commercially produced product of the meat and egg factories. i have first hand experience telling me the physical task of slitting a throat, skinning and gutting a rooster isnae as difficult as programming a pocket brain (cel phone), but. . . still psychopating. . .
i seem to be gaining confidence in the rooster containment step. last night i fine tuned the arrangement without a hitch beyond the gentle nudging to quit overthinking and just do the do. i moved the gentle marin to the rooster house and moved the white boy to take his place in the back coop. that leaves only one rooster free to service the 15 hens in the front coop and one for the 24 hens in the back coop. the precise number of hens to be serviced is my greatest doubt in the equation. chickens arenae terribly easy to count. during the day they are in constant motion. in their stillness of night, the often nestle closely enough to appear merged. who is who in there, anyway? later this morning, after the hens have left the back coop, i will reclose the coop and release white boy from the pet carrier i used accomplish the move. i will leave the pet carrier outside the closed coop door in hopes they will lay their eggs there. just hoping. . . i am also hoping the white boy will get to know the hens through the hardwire walls of the coop and decide he likes them even better than the hens in front he is currently loyal to. just hoping. . . white boy's feathers are growing a golden tinge as he ages. i find myself calling him golden boy more and more often. by whatever name, he is a spectacularly pretty boy. i am looking forward to watching him strut while i wash dishes.
the next step is what to do about the 10 roosters currently trapped in the rooster house. methinks the fissuring is from too much information. i have attended classes, employed tutors, watched a plethora of internet videos and listened to uncounted tales of second-hand knowledge. the information gleaned in the process is a tumbled jumble of conflicting methods and philosophies. which expert do i listen to? 300 rights equal chaos. since none of those experts are currently rolling up their sleeves to assist in real time, methinks i'll listen for the quiet voice.
small steps, big faith and lots of prayer.
letting god lead the dance.
yo. . . big boss. . . can you at least tell me the tune we are dancing to?
listening. . .