Anyone who has kept a flock of hens knows all about henhouse and barnyard drama. And lets face it. To those of us who love our backyard flock, the eggs are just a bonus.
Our foray into the world of hens started when my kids were very small, on “chick day” at Shur Gain. It only seemed sensible to get ourselves some cute chirping balls of fluff. What growing family doesn’t need 10 eggs a day? The chicks grew into hens, and a rooster who we named Romeo magically appeared one day. A few years passed, the hens (and Romeo) got older and I got tired of cleaning the hen house and the not so countrified man of the house got tired of walking in bird poop. We found a nice old fellow who didn’t mind a less than productive flock and offered to take them.
For the next few years my son, the youngest, pleaded his case for more birds. Joe had been moved by the feel of cold hard coin in his chubby little hands from the sale of eggs he collected. Money he stored under a pile of boards in the yard for safe keeping (true poultry “Fanciers” are an eccentric breed). Weeks went by and Joe spotted a flyer for a poultry auction, the same October weekend he was turning eight! I was raised in the country and had never before heard of a poultry auction. Clearly this was fate!
We struck a deal. If he cleaned the hen house (of the dirt left behind from the last flock) by that Saturday then a few birds from the poultry auction would be his birthday gift. Saturday morning came, and after hockey, we headed to the auction. Joe was allowed to bring a friend and I wondered how he sold his new rather bewildered teammate on this unusual birthday adventure. And I wondered if Boo’s parents thought we were a bunch of crazies.
It was a grand day! Joe was already a seasoned auction goer at eight, having spent more than a few Saturdays with his Great Granddad, both of them mesmerized by the whirling voice of the estate auctioneer and the pumped up adrenalene level of the crowd looking for deals. Throw chickens (and even ducks!) into the mix and oh what a day! As it turns out, a small amount of money will buy a large number of birds at a poultry auction so not surprisingly we came home with more than a few birds of all shapes and sizes, and even a duck! Poultry “Fanciers” are very generous and enthusiastic when a young person shows a keen interest. As we were leaving, a nice woman came to us with a cardboard box. We weren’t sure what was in it, but Joe took the box gratefully and couldn’t wait to get home to see what was inside.
And the contents of this box brings us to the present. My eccentric little boy is turning 18 this weekend. Instead of going to a poultry auction for his birthday, we are surfing Kijiji trying to find him a safe, reliable car that’s gets good gas mileage. His “Fancier” days are over (at least for now) but it was a good long eight year run of candling eggs, pouring over “The Standard of Perfection”, deciding which birds were in best “feather” for show, fielding phone calls from old men who assumed he was an old man too, getting up the nerve to do away with a brain damaged chick before it got pecked to death, or just sitting happily on the bathroom floor watching his newly hatched ducklings have their first swim in the tub.
Now I am the one with a flock. Just a small one. The eggs are good, but the barn yard soap opera is better. The star of the show is a rooster named Clyde. It’s a full time job with a 4:45 am start, and one that changes with the seasons. He knows when the cherries are ripe and where to take his ladies to find them. He knows when the sunflowers have drooped and started dropping their seeds. His knarly feathered feet scratch up the fattest worms, and his keen old eyes spy the tastiest beetles in the maple leaves by the driveway. Clyde never eats what he finds. He clucks, calls and dances until the fiesty brown layers come running. And when a big Black Australorp hen is feeling a little broody, Clyde encourages her to get on with child rearing, taking time to fluff up a hay pile and set and a cluck awhile himself. His day ends only when the hens have all safely returned to their house for the night and he can settle into his spot in the rafters for a well deserved rest. Such is the life’s work of a distinguished older gentleman named Clyde, who came in a box from a poultry auction one Saturday in October ten years ago.
