Papa raised goats too.
Sheep.....there were definitely sheep, and hogs, and turkeys. We had cows, horses, guinea fowl, ducks........Did I say cats and dogs and rabbits?
Hey! I must have lived on a farm!!!
All the stuff defining a place as a homestead, was right there! I remember now, on account of it was my job to cater to all those creatures.
When I went off to college, the old man began selling off the livestock. Papa said he needed the money for tuition but I think the loss of his free labor, me, was the real reason.
Farming must be in the blood because when my kids got old enough, I started to reminisce. Good memories. You never seem to remember the bad ones. I certainly didn't want my children to miss the experience of caring for animals.
We built a rip roaring hen house. This thing is a site! If I was born a fowl this is where I would want to live.
Heck, my hens strut around like royalty. We bought the finest post and square wire! Not your ordinary, stop sign looking, mesh most poultry yards are made of, no sir, only the best for our ladies!
Our eggs were going to go for $3.00 a piece, because that is what they would have to fetch to pay for this operation.
We weren't going to allow any trashy fowl up in here either. No Captain! Only the highest quality for us! This coop was going to be a palace!
I worked out an amortization schedule on the confuser and figured in the depreciation factor and the cost of grain. The tax write off alone made the project worth the expense! I concluded that $36.00 a dozen over 10 years at 25 dozen a day would about break us even!
Let's do it!
We attached our coop to the back side of the tractor barn and built a fancy roost inside. I constructed a room on the side to store our feed and supplies too. In front of the roost, we built 8 elaborate nest boxes. Then assembled a small ramp for the hens to walk up to get to the straw beds. Of course we had a regular sized door to get into the structure, and a little door for the girls to come and go.
We enclosed the area behind the barn with wire for a nice aviary. Yes! A top notch operation right here!
The weekend came and I loaded the boys in the pickup for a trip to the farm supply store to choose some biddies.
Folks, this place was cranked up for the season! They had every sort of poultry imaginable! Andalusians, and Astralorp and Buckeyes and Cornish and Dominiques and Jersey Giants and Orpingtons and at least seventeen more breeds.
We came home with about a half dozen of each, 16 sacks of feed, three automatic water troughs with matching feeders, warming lamps, and other sundries a proper poultryman can't do without.
The Missus wasn't pleased! She grumbled something about having 3 children instead of two, then didn't speak for two days.
The boys and I built a brooder pen for the chicks. It was home sweet home until they grew big enough to run in the yard.
We had to make a trip to the hardware store and buy up all the extension cords, on account of I failed to provide the facilities with electric amenities.
The guy that owns the place likes me, I think he depends on my shenanigans to make the note on his wife's Mercedes.
Anyway, we rigged up some bright lights to keep the babies warm and entered, officially, into the chicken business!
The years passed and somehow I was feeding livestock again, while my boys were off at basketball games and movies and courting young women!
But, I won't lie, I enjoyed it.
I like turning the girls out to scuff around the grounds while I work in the garden. I dragged an old wooden adirondack chair out to the edge of the patch and sit of an evening watching my hens chase bugs and scratch. As dusk approaches, the old red rooster positions himself beside the gate. I swear that guy is counting each bird as she goes in to roost.
One morning, I went out to the coop to let the ladies out, and discovered evidence of a gruesome murder!
Gore was scattered everywhere, and all that was left of my prize Orpington hen was feet and feathers.
The other birds had compromised the crime scene, so I couldn't find a clue as to the murderer's identity.
The next morning I found another victim, at least parts of one. An Astralorp had gone to the big barnyard in the sky!
Friends, we had us a serial killer and he was determined to put me out of the egg business. This rascal had the ladies so upset they cut way back on their laying.
I needed some help, so I called my friend Thomas to come head the investigation.
Now, Thomas is a chicken whisperer from way back. The boy knows his poultry! Thomas has this little bantam rooster that he calls Sam. This puff of feathers can eat more grain than a horse! Thomas carries that bird around like it is a chihuahua.
The bantam and my big rhode island red, Jabob I call him, get along pretty well, for roosters. If you know chickens you probably know roosters usually hate each other....it's a man thing.
One day Thomas came by for a visit and, while we were sitting in the yard swing, swapping lies, he says, "I bet Sam can eat more corn than Jacob."
I sized up the two contenders and says, "No he can't!"
"$5.00 says it's so!" he exclaimed.
Buddy, the bout was on, my contestant was at least four times as big as Sam, so I knew this was an easy win. I fetched a dozen ears of corn from the crib and we sat picking kernels off the cobs and tossing them to those roosters one at a time.
After awhile, Jacob's craw got swollen up so big he was about to explode.
Little Sam would peck a kernel from the ground, gulp it down, squat, and drop some fertilizer on the lawn. I'm telling you, that bird processed some corn!
Sam reminded me of one of those Dr. Seuss machines, where you put the raw materials in one end and out plops the finished product at the other. Yes sir, that creature was a bonafide manure factory!
Jacob stayed with him for as long as he was able. His throat got so heavy with corn it was hard to hold his head up, so he threw in the towel and forfeited the match!
That little bantam acted like he could eat corn another two hours and walked up to me, cocked his head to the side, looked me in the eye as if to say, "Pay up sucka!" Then he crowed!!
Thomas chuckled and snapped that crisp $5.00 bill between his fingers and then stuffed it in his pocket.
Anyway, my old friend came by that afternoon and gave the crime scene a once over.
"Here's what you do," he said. "go down to the Walmart, in the baby section, they have these monitors that run on batteries. Buy one of them, and put the papoose part in the coop and the other beside your bed. If something gets to them in the night, their squawking will wake you up and you can dash out here and blast the scoundrel!"
Thomas was a smart man. I would have never thought of that in a thousand years!
So that's what I did.
I stood the trusty double barrel by the back door, along with my headlight, then crawled into bed.
I read my kindle awhile, until I dosed off and it cracked me across the bridge of the nose. That's always my cue to turn of the light and pull up the covers.
The next thing I know, the Missus is shaking me awake saying something about the chickens. I focused on the monitor. At first, silence, then the most horrible squalling and squawking you ever heard came out of that speaker.
The killer had returned!
I jumped from the bed and struggled into my work boots, grabbed the headlight and got it positioned on my head. When I went out the back door my trusty labrador retriever, Jackson, fell in beside me!
We got to the pen in time to surprise the murderer. A raccoon! With one of my best layers too!
The animal dropped his prize and ran for the fence. I was fumbling with shells and attempting to keep the light on him while trying to get the gate open.
Jackson went around the outside of the enclosure and lunged at the coon on the other side, roaring like Cerberus at the gates of Hades.
Now, that raccoon was treed......well, fenced at least. He made it to the top rail and was pacing back and forth wondering whether to take on the dog or the half naked crazy man yelling encouragement to the hound. Mr. Raccoon didn't have long to decide, I blew him about ten feet off that fence with a blast from my shotgun!
I think Jackson caught him in midair, because when I rounded the corner of the pen, he had that coon's limp body in his mouth, shaking it for all it was worth!
I got my birds settled again and took the corpse of my deceased hen by the feet, Jackson carried the thief.
We were walking up the hill back to the house, me with my headlight on and carrying that dead bird in one hand. I was in my tightie whities with my catfish belly white legs fairly glowing in the dark. I was wearing my cowboy boots, with a shotgun slung over one shoulder too. Jackson, at heel at my side, carried an expired raccoon in his mouth.
That's when the headlights came on!
I was like a deer in a spotlight, frozen!
A door opened and a figure emerged from the passenger side. The vehicle started up and turned around and I watched the tail lights disappear down our long drive.
"Heh, Pops, What cha doin?" says my son walking up.
"Well your Mom and I had an urge for some fried chicken, and the KFC is closed. Who is that in the car?"
"Jennifer, remember, I went to her house to study?"
"Uh, huh, well you got some lipstick on yer cheek!" I said shining my light on his face.
"Here," I said, handing him the dead chicken, "fetch a shovel from the shed, and get that coon away from Jackson and bury them. I'm going back to bed!"
A few days later I asked the boy, "How's Jennifer?"
"We broke up," he said.
"Oh! Son, what happened?"
"Well, she said I take after you too much. After the other night she knows what I'm gonna look like naked in 30 years. She said she couldn't bear to be married to such an ugly fella!"
He got out the door before I could catch him!
I hope you enjoyed this little tale.
It is based on a true story and enhanced with,
what we in the industry refer to as,
artistic license.
The common folk call them lies.
CARRY ON!
