by Pa Rock
Farmer in Winter
2020 just could not end without dropping one final note of sadness onto my little corner of the world.
I have had poultry at The Roost since shortly after moving here in early March of 2014. At one point I had a couple of dozen little red hens who were laying more eggs than I could give away. Over the years I also had guineas, turkeys, geese, ducks, and peacocks in addition the red hens and roosters that were always underfoot as they worked the yard looking for bugs and worms and other delicious treats.
But it seemed like the as the bird population increased, so did the number of predators who showed up to feast on my feathered friends, and gradually the poultry began decreasing. I gave the peacocks and geese to a neighbor, and the guinea and turkey populations died out. The chickens also went into a steep decline. For the past two years The Roost has been home to just two fowl, a red hen and rooster, a devoted couple who were the best of friends and looked after each other.
A couple of months ago the little hen died of old age and decrepitude, conditions which are beginning to impact me as well. The rooster was lonely, but adapted by taking up with the cats and always showing up for their feedings. He slept in the chicken coop, and each morning at 4:00 when I went out to feed the cats, I would open the door to the coop and wish him a cheerful "Good morning!" Somedays he would be crowing before I got there, and other days he would start after I opened the coop. In the evenings he would head into the coop as the shadows began lengthening and would be up in the rafters by the time I came to close him in.
We had a good routine working for us.
Late yesterday evening when I went to feed the cats their supper, which the rooster often joined in if he had not already "flown up" in the coop, my friend, the rooster, was no where to be found. I went looking and found him wandering aimlessly in the yard. I tried to shoo him toward his coop, but when he got close he turned and ran away. Realizing that there might be a predator in the coop, I got a flashlight and made a search of the little building - but found nothing. I left the door open so that he could go in when the mood suited him.
About 8:00 p.m. I went outside for one final search and discovered the rooster, now soaked, roosting on the back of a lawn chair on the deck in the rain and drizzle. I gathered him up and carried him to the coop where I turned on the lights and again looked around. It was obvious that he was leary about being there, the only home he had ever known, but he eventually flew up into the rafters to roost.
This morning, at 4:00 when I went out to feed the cats, I found my buddy, the old red rooster, dead in the chicken coop. A predator had broken his neck and thrown him to the floor. The attacker had not eaten his prey, just killed him.
The rooster had been born in an incubator on my kitchen table - along with several other baby chicks - in the spring of 2017, and he had spent his entire life within a couple of hundred yards of the place he was born. The bird was an important part of the little farm, and he will be remembered and missed.
My friend crowed his last "good morning" at Rock's Roost on the morning of New Year's Eve, so I am recording December 31st as the official date of his demise.
2020 was a hard year at The Roost. I spent almost the entire year in the house doing my best to avoid the pandemic, suffered a broken arm and the indignities that come with limited mobility, lost an entire order of baby chicks to a predator, witnessed the death the little red hen, lost Fiona, the mama farm cat, to a hit-and-run driver earlier in December, and now the rooster is gone.
Surely things will have to start getting better at some point!
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