Killer Chicken

I have been feeling sorry for my rooster, Hercules. He roosts in the barn wherever he pleases now, but he no longer has the small space and accumulated body heat in the coop to keep him warm. (See my last post for an explanation.) I have been suffering from scruples about him, trying to figure out if he needs a separate house, if I should attempt to re-home him, or if he should be... ehem... dispatched. But I haven't had the time to make a snug house or build a new run. And I can't bring myself to kill him, despite knowing that it may be more humane than letting him get frostbite, which is inevitable. 

For some time now my son and husband have complained about Hercules. They fill in for me with animal chores sometimes and have reported being flown at, pecked, scratched, even having a leg clung to by him. Once my husband kicked him in self defense! At first I thought that it was a little bit humorous to feel threatened by a chicken because I had never experienced the terror myself. 

Hercules did do his strut and his funny one-wing-down, side-stepping shuffle with me. He did charge at me. But he only feinted. I figured that he did not see me as a competitor or a threat and was used to me, so I didn't worry about it too much. Mostly I've had too many other things to worry about.

But lately, Herc has been more and more aggressive towards me. I suppose he hasn't taken kindly to being banished from the chicken run. He's seen me enter to tend the food and water, and probably thinks that I have stolen his "girls." He has started seeing me as a "competitor." 

Now he lurks silently and flies out at me in a fury when I am off guard. He leaps at me, all flying feathers and thrashing wings, with his talons extended. He strikes at my feet and legs with his beak. He scratches with his legs. (Thankfully, his spurs are not fully formed yet!) And most recently, he flew at me feet first, clutched my pants with his claws, and pecked ferociously at my knee. Ouch! Now my husband is the one who thinks it is funny, since I sort of shrugged off his earlier complaints. And now I am always looking over my shoulder so as not to be caught off guard by "the killer roo." It makes my chore times much more unpleasant, and I don't like to be mildly bullied by a chicken.

As I contemplated the state of affairs tonight on the way back to the house from the barn, I remembered a story I was once told many, many years ago by a previous co-worker of mine. Let me relate it to you as I remember it, and as my imagination has embellished it over the years, because it relates to my future. And, frankly, it's a bit funny too. (I shall change my co-worker's name, for the sake of her privacy.) 

Jane was a horse lover. For as long as she could remember, she had always wanted a horse. In her youth she took riding lessons, and dreamed of the day that she would own her own horse. After college, when she was young and single and had been hired into a steady job, she saved up her money until she could buy a beautiful gelding. She lived in an apartment and didn't even own a car yet, but she scrimped and saved in order to board her horse at the most inexpensive place around at which to do so. 

Soon Jane learned why it cost less to board her horse at the stables she had chosen. An aggressive rooster had the run of the farm. It tormented all of the visitors. Soon she dreaded encounters with this flying ball of thrashing, sharp fury. She learned to only wear long pants and long sleeves when going to visit her horse. Then she took to wearing gloves.

The scratching, feathered ferocity always lay in wait for Jane, so it didn't stop there. Once the rooster landed on her head as she was bending over to muck her stall. He got his feet entangled in her hair, and gave her a sharp blow with his beak before she managed to get him off. After that, since Jane had bought a horse instead of a car and therefore traveled by moped, she began leaving her helmet on for protection when working in the barn, leading her horse out to pasture, or heading to the riding ring. Once safely outside of the range of the rooster's possessiveness, she would take off the helmet and hang it on a fence post until it was time to return to the stables. 

Finally, after so many scratches and attacks, tired of prying the raging rooster off of her leg, unable to carry the pitch fork or muck rake with her for defense from the motorcycle to the barn or from the motorcycle to the pasture, Jane began arming herself with a baseball bat, which she kept bungeed to the bike. It happened at first as an afterthought after softball practice, but soon is became a regular habit to carry it as a club of defense. Armed in such a way, with her riding boots, long pants, long sleeves, leather gloves, and motorcycle helmet on, Jane was once heading out from the parking area to bring her horse in from the pasture to the barn so as to curry him. Just as she bent over to duck under the electric fence, the sneaking rooster flew up from the rear and sank his talons into her derriere, clinging tightly, thrashing wildly, and gouging whatever he could with his sharp beak. Just as she instinctively swung wildly and blindly behind her with the ball bat, a sudden pain caused her to jerk herself inadvertantly upward. This brought her into contact with the live wire, which added extra ferocity to her swing.

Jane quickly lowered herself to break connection with the searing, numbing wire and tried to move forward, only to arch her back again in an involuntary response to a particularly sharp and dragging jab of the beast's hooked beak. Again this caused contact with the hot wire, and again she was jolted with the buzzing, fiery electricity as she swung. This time she made contact with the choleric chicken. 

For what seemed like many minutes, but what must have only been the matter of seconds, Jane was caught in this precarious position with the rooster firmly attached to her backside, the electric fence wires above her making contact off and on as she struggled to pry him off, strike him, or move out from under the fence. She gritted her teeth against the exploding pain and used all her willpower to hold still in a half-crouch under the wire. She took a split second to assess the situation. 

Her helmet screen had become fogged and splattered with perspiration, so she couldn't see well. Her breath was fast and hard, like Darth Vader on speed. She felt some blood trickle down her leg. A broad band on her back felt burned and tingling. Wait, was it her imagination or was that fiendish fowl flapping about with a little less vigor back there? 

Jane decided that this was her opportunity to be free of him. She lunged out from under the fence. Then quickly she rose and swung around with all of her force as she lashed out once more in desperation with the baseball bat. As she completed her swing, the rooster let go of his hold on her bottom and was flung with centrifugal force toward the fence. He grazed a wire for a moment, twitched with a sickening spasm, and then fell lifeless to the ground beneath the fence.

Jane inhaled sharply. She wrenched off her helmet and threw it down to get some air and a better view. She stood there in pain, panting. "Oh, no!" she thought. "I killed the damned thing!" She tossed aside the bat that she found herself still clutching tightly, tore off her gloves, threw them toward the helmet, and gingerly felt the back of her pants as she twisted round to view the damage. They were sticky with chicken dung, blood, and the mud and manure that had been on the rooster's feet. "He deserved it!" She thought to herself. 

But then a wave of worry passed over her when she realized that she would have to tell the owners of the farm that she had killed their rooster. Would they let her horse stay on or would they ask her to leave? Where else would she find a place to stable her horse for what she could afford? How would she pay to transport him? All of these thoughts raced through her head. She decided to get the ordeal over with right away. For one thing, she thought, maybe they would pity her in the bedraggled, beaten state she was in. 

As it turned out, the proprietors of the stables were very apologetic. In fact, they told her that they were actually relieved. "That infernal bird has tormented this place for far too long. We should have killed it long ago, but we didn't have the heart to. In fact, we ought to thank you!" 

As a token of their appreciation, and perhaps in an effort to keep her from suing them for damages, they gave her six months of stabling for free. The best part was that she could once again wear shorts, muck a stall without a motorcycle helmet on, and never had to be on the lookout for the tiny terror again. But it it took a while before she could sit down without wincing or could ride comfortably. 

And this folks, is the predicament that I am in. Much like the farm owners in the aforementioned story, I don't want to harm the feathered fowl that is slowly flowering into a full fledged fiend of frenzy. I don't want him to suffer by getting frost bite. But I also do not want him to tear up my hens, terrorize me while working, or worst of all- attack one of my small children. This is why I ordered all hens in the first place. Something will eventually have to be done.

Hercules is Banished

One evening, recently, I entered the chicken run to close up the attached coop. As usual, I hung up the food to keep rodents from eating the chicken feed. I checked the waterer, and noticed it was low. So I unplugged it. (It's a heated fountain.) I lugged it out of the hoop run, through the pasture gate, and over to one of the yard hydrants. When I prepared to wash and fill the canister, I noticed that it was covered with tiny splashes of blood. 

My heart stopped for a split second and my mind raced. I wondered if some vermin had dug their way in and harmed or killed a chicken. I had seen signs of digging on days when the ground was thawed a bit. I wondered if one of the birds had gotten injured and was cannibalized. None of the options seemed good.

When the reservoir was scrubbed and filled, I carefully flipped it over, so as not to spill it. Then I carefully lugged the heavy thing back to the hoop house. I leveled the waterer to prevent leaks, plugged it back in, and stood against the door, observing the birds and looking for signs of a scuffle or digging. I saw neither. All the birds seemed fine. The only thing that seemed odd was that Hercules, the biggest rooster, had pink saddle feathers. 

So I began to count. Five times I counted them, and each time I came up one short. I sighed. My heart sank. I prepared mentally to find a dead hen in the coop. Since the pop door on the coop is so low, and the coop so dark, I exited the run and walked around to the coop side. First I checked the nest boxes, thinking an injured bird might hunker down in a close, dark space. All four were empty. Then I unlatched and lifted off one side of the roof. All looked normal, except that there were small spatters of blood on the coop doors and walls.

Perplexed, I retraced my steps and walked into the hoop house again. When I counted again, I came up with the correct number. One of the hens must have hopped out of the coop just before I peered inside. 

Then my close inspections began, and I found that a big, reddish hen had bled at the base of her comb. Her feathers were spiky and wet there and where the blood had dripped onto her neck. The tiny splatters were probably from the dripping blood tickling and causing her to shake her head, which flung off some of the blood from her feathers as if from a paint brush. She was eating and moving about normally, so I let them all roost for the night and closed them up safely, as usual. 

I determined that the rooster, who was stained pink, was the culprit. He was rough with the "girls." And with the predator problems and the cold weather, they had been penned up, so they could not escape him. He often pecked the back of their heads fiercely when treading them, or nipped them and pinned them down while staying clamped on. 

So the next morning, when Hercules did his usual strutting and made his scuffling advances toward me, I opened the run door a crack and let him slip outside. The hen's wound was clearly better and the others were leaving her alone, so I completed my chicken chores and tended the goat. I put water and food out for the exiled rooster, but he was beside himself and paced the perimeter of the coop all day, crowing in what seemed like rage and sorrow. I felt guilty. But I also felt that I had no choice.

It was my intention to repeat this scenario each morning, but when I went out for my evening chores in the barn, Hercules had already roosted above one of the sliding horse stall doors. Although I flipped on the barn lights, he showed no intention of moving. His long tail feathers curved down, and he eyed me witheringly with one of his beady, red-rimmed, yellow eyes. 

As my little ones were in the house with my 15 year old, I didn't feel comfortable lugging a ladder over, grappling with a struggling roo, climbing down with him as an unwilling companion, opening the barn door, opening the pasture gate, opening the chicken run, and stuffing him into the pop door on the coop. It would take so long. What if he made me lose my balance? What if I lost my grip on him and he was out in the fast-falling dark and not roosted? So I left him. But I did leave a light on, to deter any prowling raccoons.

And this has been our arrangement ever since. Hercules is a lot less agitated by being separated from the females, and the hens have been happy and uninjured since his departure. He roams outside the pasture now or in the barn, occasionally perching in some prominent place and repeatedly crowing as loudly as he his able for a longish spell, as if defiantly proclaiming his ownership, despite his limitations. Sometimes he even makes his way to the house, ascends to the picnic table on the patio, and struts back and forth on its top, crying out for intervals as if with impotent rage. 

The one rooster left with the hens is a bantam named Rosie. (Read more about him here.) He still looks like a half-plucked cornish game hen, and the "girls" ignore or easily spurn his half-hearted and wimpy advances. He spends most of his time pulling his naked legs up against his body for warmth, hunkering down in the bedding on the floor of the run in order to conserve his body heat, or eating with slow steadiness, as if determined to gain enough size to be able to throw his weight around. We tried calling him Petey instead (like Pete Rose) once we learned he was a male, but with his bright pink skin and mild temper, Rosie he remains.