We made it 6 days. We did not make it 41 days. On the morning of the sixth day Cashew had come to my bed and barked every hour on the hour since 10 pm the night before. I never hit deep sleep, ever, because every hour on the hour cashew was there barking in my face. It was as if she said, “well if the rules dont apply to him, they dont apply to me neither. Im gonna try barking whenever i feel like it in the house and we’ll see if you care as little as you do when he does it!” Buddy wasnt even crowing. He was under his towel, but he was screaming as soon as cashew was barking, so every hour on the hour i had to get up and sing soft kitty to a ballistic rooster. Then at 6:00 am he started with all that “cock-a-doodle-doo” stuff and cashew went over to bark at him and i told her to shut up and buddy thought i was yelling at him and i looked over to see trash all over the kitchen floor. An entire full bag of trash had been spread all over the kitchen floor because cashew had raided it for rooster tootsie rolls. Cue the waterfall of diarrhea. I looked at the floor around the rooster crate and found it spotless, as in vacuumed by dog. Not only had she eaten the rooster shit and left the evidence of her crime for me to clean up, she had also ingested several raw grains, protein pellets, and seeds that Buddy had flung out of his crate when ballistic. By 7 am she was whimpering and pacing, scratching on the door. I had to get up at 7:05. I had wanted to try for 7:30 but i had no choice. She was about to be violently ill in the house. I let her outside in the dog run and as she squatted and shook i muttered, “i cant do this anymore. I cant do this anymore! I cant do this anymore! I cant spend one more day, one more hour, one more minute with everybody making extremely poor life decisions in my one room house with me! I dont even know what im saying! Ive got to get some sleep! I have to sleep! I have to have quiet! I have to sleep! I cannot spend the whole weekend with crowing every thirty seconds…i cant watch the dogs while i sleep, i cant deal with whatevers coming out of her! I cant deal with any of this! Generations of chickens are just gonna have to be fine. He’s just gonna have to be healthy! We came, we tried, its just not possible. Its humanly impossible. What human could live like this? They cant. Its impossible. The military uses shit like this as an interrogation technique on terrorists for God’s sake. Im only one person…..im only human…..” As i was muttering to myself in my sleep deprivation psychosis, i had walked into the house, opened the rooster crate, removed the water bowl, removed the food bowl, tackled Buddy, lifted him into my arms, and was now carrying him around the outside of the pullet pen like a football. I said, “Okay guys, look here, here’s your nice new boyfriend and here’s your nice new hens and yall can just be nice to each other and like each other and assimilate and such cuz here’s the deal here, i need you to give me babies in february and we’re gonna make some reese’s peanut butter cup chickens in february and march okay but we need the rooster here to do it and see, you’re not gonna find a more friendly gentlemanly rooster i mean, 99.9 percent of them are homicidal maniacs that will rip out your feathers and mush your face in the dirt so yall just go ahead and like him cuz if you kill him im gonna have to get you a meaner rooster cuz there aint another nice one to choose from. And you can go ahead and enjoy your life with these ladies cuz it sure beats getting culled in a kill pen in mason, right? Yeah, theres ladies here for you, so everybody just be nice and like each other, okay?” I carried Buddy around inside the pen and let him look at the ladies. Then i put him down and left. The lead hen fought Buddy fiercely for about 30 seconds before she realized he’s much bigger and fights like a rooster. The seller had kindly removed his spurs for the moment. Im sure they’ll grow back but i appreciated that detail during the assimilation fight with the main hen. When the lead hen called uncle the rooster let her up and went about his business eating. Nobody challenged him again. They all ate and hung out together and Buddy crowed every 30 seconds all throughout the day until 7 pm. Im wondering if he can be heard on neighboring ranches. Im also wondering if the prolific non stop crowing is part of the reason he was about to be culled. Its not a reason for me to cull him. He’s nice to the hens, pretty, healthy, and he runs from me rather than at me when i come to give them more food or collect eggs. Thats rare to find so if he wants to crow every 30 seconds im not going to try to stop him. I am somewhat worried a neighbor will get fed up and try to stop him. I dont remember ira crowing every thirty seconds. I think that frequency may be specific to Buddy. But, its a small price to pay for a non-homicidal rooster. I cant guarantee he’ll stay that way. Sometimes roosters become possessive and protective once they have hens they perceive as their own. However, no matter what happens, i need him to make reese’s chickens next spring. I just hope my neighbors’ houses are far enough away that they cant really hear him like i can. And i hope raccoons are threatened by that noise rather than drawn to it.
When I was a little kid, maybe 7 years old, dad had a prize winning rooster. I was afraid of it as it was, as you describe, a homicidal maniac toward me.
I was “helping” my father work and he sent me to get some tools. When I mentioned the rooster he gave me a hammer handle and told me to “whup him up side the head if he attacks you”.
That night we had chicken for supper. Dad was not happy. Mom was, “Well, you sent him up there and told him what to do…. You should have seen that one coming.”
Lol! I think Mom was right…he set that one in motion.