My mother, Mary Myers, is 90 years young and is taking great vicarious enjoyment in my chicken farming ventures here in Kentucky. She wrote this very short story about the latest adventure I related to her.
—Carol Cacchione, Kentucky
Lately we're hearing a lot about free ranging chickens. Some advocates even claim they can taste a difference in the eggs. Obviously free ranging means more than just, "Be careful where you step."
It wasn't long ago, was it, when we assumed, along with the chickens, that it was their Darwinian right to peck around the farm, because that's what chickens did. At night they welcomed their pleasantly lit hen house. And in the morning they clucked their way outdoors to do what they had done the day before. That was about all I knew of chickens' ways and days until our daughter Carol started raising some on her alpaca farm in Kentucky.
Stew and Fricassee, two chicken brothers, were the only chicks to hatch when Carol's hen went broody. Like it is for most of us, the two roosters are two too many, but the pleasure they provide makes turning them into their namesakes difficult. |
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Carol is tall and her husband is taller. And so they built an exceptionally tall hen house and began acquiring residents. They bought one or two of the best laying breeds available, some dozen in all. To her surprise, Carol soon discovered that chickens have distinct personalities, some more personable than those of the alpacas themselves. Unless encouraged, alpacas, though appealingly fluffy, are innately remote.
Not so the chickens. And thus begins a tender chicken story. Early this spring, one of Carol's hens, a Barred Rock named Mildred, got a determined look in her eye and began requesting breakfast in bed. A reliable sign, an amused neighboring farmer told Carol, that Mildred had gone broody. Sure enough. Discreet sleuthing proved that Mildred was hoarding not only her own brown eggs but also was stealing other hens' white and green eggs and sitting on them all as her personal responsibility. She made this very clear through many long days and nights of selflessness, until finally, two baby chicks hatched. When nothing more happened past the allotted time span, Carol removed the chicks to a protected spot in her barn where she could monitor their growth and progress. Mildred decided motherhood was not all it was cracked up to be and rejoined her girlfriends enjoying dust baths under the raspberry bushes.
Meantime, with Carol's help, the two little chicks have survived peephood. And now that their voices are changing, Carol is detecting the ominous hint of a crow from each straining throat. Could they be roosters? The flock already has a rooster named Frank who is, frankly, all the rooster the flock needs. And although nobody on the farm has gone beyond poaching, frying and devilling a lot of eggs, these two newcomers are now named Stew and Fricassee.
After careful introduction, the flock has accepted them. The hens pay little attention to them. Stew and Frick pay less to them. Their social interests lie only in each other. Brothers together, they are a band unto themselves, always one beside the other.
Until the other day when Carol found Fricassee pecking at a pellet alone. "Frick! Where's Stew?" she asked.
Startled, Frick looked around. Seeing no Stew, he squawked a frantic "cock-a-doodle-doo!" From somewhere out in the pasture an equally frantic "oodle-oo!" answered him. The two began racing toward each other like long-lost friends, and were not at ease until they were once again side by side.
"How can I eat them?" Carol asks. She can't transfer them to us in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania because Wellsboro does not permit the raising of chickens, let alone roosters, within its borders. Most residents support this ordinance. One of them said to me at the supermarket last week, "Well, chickens are cute when they're young, but...". Her shrug suggested they are capable of developing foul attitudes when they are old.
"Well," I said, laying the carton of eggs from un-caged chickens in my grocery cart, "aren't we all?"
