The Minnesota Farm Woman

Henry the Rooster has gone to a happier place.  The combination of a long snowy winter and seven roosters in the coop has taken its toll.  I don’t have to worry so much about the four small Banty roosters, as they keep to themselves. The three full-sized roosters have been the problem with their “who rules the roost” mentality.  I read somewhere that chicken farmers should have one rooster for every 20 hens, but I ended up with a couple of extra boys for my 17 girls.  Farm Women of old would have taken the extras to the chopping block, but I don’t have the stomach for that.  They were beating each other up to the point of being bloody, and I don’t have the stomach for that, either, so something had to be done.  My chicken coop is attached to the barn, which is actually an old garage in which we store corn, straw, and a bunch of junk. After one bloody battle which happened right in front of me,  Henry got relegated to the barn. I chose Henry because he was closest to the door and could be shooed out more easily than the others.  I started asking around, and finally found another Farm Woman who actually wanted a rooster, but now the trick was getting Henry to his new home.  I had a good plan:  I filled a large dog cage with straw, a container of water, leftover coleslaw, and bread.  I made a trail of breadcrumbs leading to the cage and waited.  Henry started circling the cage.  I waited some more.  After circling the cage a few times, Henry moved on.  On to Plan B:   I grabbed a long pole and started leading Henry toward the cage.  It was working.  Closer and closer, faster and faster, until I slipped and fell on some loose straw, tumbling down like some sort of giant flapping chicken and landing right in front of the cage.  I’m not sure if it was fear or surprise, but at that exact moment, Henry jumped right into the cage, splattering water and coleslaw everywhere.  There I was, lying on a filthy barn floor with spatters of old coleslaw on my face, crawling toward the cage to lock him in. Who rules the roost now, boys?  Henry wasn’t too happy staying in that cage for a couple of days until he could be delivered to his new home, but you should have seen him when we carried that cage into his new coop, filled with hens that he could woo all by himself.  The minute he saw them, he started making noises in his throat and puffing out his chest, excited at seeing all those lovely women.  Yes, Henry has gone to a much happier place.  The other two large roosters are happier, too. Just yesterday, one chased the other through the door into the barn.  He probably thought if one rival disappeared through that door and never came back, the same might happen to the other.  I can see the rooster wars have not ended, but unfortunately, I am still limping around and not quite up to another capture yet.