Where I talk at length about chicken mating

Yeah, I've been gone a long while.

 

I hope you are not surprised. 

If so you clearly are new here and/or haven't been paying attention.

 

It pretty much boils down to my laptop has been "critically low" on battery life and I've been too "critically lazy" to charge it AND I certainly and not going to attempt to type on my phone. My latest attempt ended up with "cegetarian recipes" so I can only imagine how awesome an entire blog post would be.

 

In the meantime my daughter turned five and asked for a rooster as a birthday present.

 

A rooster and a giant diamond.

 

 The rooster happened to actually be within our price range (free) so a few weeks ago “Roosty” joined our flock of six hens. You might think to yourself, “How cute! Kids ask for the craziest things” and the majority of the time you would be correct.

 

 Not so much in this case.

Roosty and his lady hens

 

 

The rooster wasn’t the wild request of a young girl as much as he was the missing link to a well thought out plan that had been forming in her mischievous little girl brain since we told her she would never have baby chicks because the eggs weren’t fertile. She knew exactly what she was doing after that. I didn’t realize that I had been duped until a few days later when she was upset because Roosty was “jumping on her favorite hen and being mean.” I explained that although not very romantic, that was how chickens mate and her anger quickly turned to glee and she ran outside to congratulate Heddy the hen on having fertile eggs and inform her she would someday have baby chicks after all.

 

 I know that sounds odd, but we live out in the country and don’t have a TV. My kids play with dirt and sticks and spend a ridiculous time observing chickens and cows.

 

 I was actually surprised because I hadn’t seen any chicken mating going on and it had been a few days. I’m not an expert, but I sort of thought that it would have happened pretty quickly. I had started to wonder if maybe Roosty was a gentlemen chicken and liked to romance his ladies before he started any serious business. Or perhaps it was all happening at night in the hen house because he was shy or if maybe he couldn’t because there were always children around bothering him (totally feel you on that one, Roosty).

 

 No worries though. Roosty has found a way to overcome all obstacles and is mating all over the place now. Ava is delighted and has tricked us (once again) into incubating some of the eggs so our house can be filled with adorable chicks and not so adorable chick droppings a few weeks from now. Also, I’m expecting a phone call from our neighbors any day because yesterday Ava explained the whole chicken mating process to the little boy next door who according to her “doesn’t know anything about chickens” because he thought that the rooster sat on the eggs and that’s how chicks were made.

 

So, in conclusion, these chickens are turning out to be more trouble than they are worth---but their eggs are tasty and they are pretty fun to watch so they can stay for now.