Chickens, People and Lessons

I have raised chickens for several years and though I don’t claim to know everything about my feathered friends I can say I have learned a lot about them and about people along the way as well.  If you live in the country you should raise chickens at least once in your life.  You figure out what the words “Are you chicken?” really mean…..

My first experience was around ten years ago when I bought 12 chicks from Tractor Supply.  They were little black puff balls that chirped incessantly the entire drive home.  When I tumbled them into their temporary home – a galvanized trough with a heat lamp, water and food I figured that would be the just of it.  They get bigger, they cluck, I steal their eggs, they thank me for the privilege and that’s it.  They’re happy and I’m happy end of story.

As they stared to grow though I noticed that two of them looked a little different and not realizing it at the time the chicks who were all supposed to be pullets (hens for the city folk) didn’t get the “you’re a hen” memo and they grew up to be roosters.  In my mind not a big deal because a chicken is a chicken and I still had memories from a kid in school of someone saying “What are you chicken?” which clearly they had no idea what that meant.

I knew the roosters were a little different when they started tearing the feathers off of some of the hens.  Then one morning I was feeding the birds, turned my back to put the lid on the can where their food was when I heard a noise and felt at terrible pain in the back of my leg.  I turned and immediately there was a rooster flying right at my face.  I ducked and knocked him down and he came at me again and put a spur in my shin. 

While blood was running down my leg I was trying to process why feeding a rooster would insight violence?  The fact of the matter is it’s a rooster, there’s no reasoning with one and it doesn’t matter what you do you’re still going to get attacked.  Thank God a few weeks later a hawk who had a taste for chicken took my friend with anger issues out to lunch and never came back.

Hens aren’t without fault in this story either.  The chickens I have gotten since really have been hens and I haven’t been threatened, assaulted or have had them try and take my lunch money away from me which is a plus.  However in watching the hens with each other I have come to see where the term “pecking order” comes from and I would go so far as to say I have seen an entire flock pick out one hen and push them around or peck at them for no reason other then they were the smallest.

I bring this up because sometimes I see the same behavior in people that I see in a rooster or hen.  I have seen people pull a rooster when someone cuts them off in traffic or was blocking someone inadvertently in an isle at a grocery store.  I have seen people being picked at because they are smaller, bigger, they look different, they think different, etc.  I will close with this, are we men and women each with a story to be told, each with hopes, dreams. Let’s do better than the chickens.  Just a thought.

Peace Always,

Lester