The cock, he doth croweth

This morning, I was down in the chicken coop washing piles of chicken crap off the top of the birds’ feeder. I was vaguely annoyed because Jake had forgotten to move the feeder, which is usually suspended from a really high bar on which the birds perch at night, to a location not in the firing line of their nighttime turds.

It’s a messy, gross business, scraping chicken poop with a stick off the lid of the feeder, one that could be easily avoided if ONE OF US REMEMBERS TO MOVE THE FEEDER BEFORE LOCKING THE BIRDS UP AT NIGHT.

Anyway, there I was scraping away in the chicken yard, when one of the birds near my feet let out a shy, reticent crow. The hens whipped around to see the offending noise maker, then high-tailed it back into the coop.

I looked at the crower. He — and I say he because as far as I know female chickens aren’t capable of making this sound — just outed himself as THE ROOSTER!  He stared at me and cocked his head to one side, as if he was as surprised as the rest of us by his adolescent display of swagger and ability to send the hens racing back to the coop.

For the longest time, Jake and I have had the hardest time identifying males from females because at this stage of their development, they all kind of all look the same. Many of the hens have baby combs and wattles — those reddish appendages that grow on their heads and hang from their face — so we could never be sure we were looking at a Mr. or Ms.

Well, now we know there is at least one impregnator in the flock.  I’m sure we can expect a lot more crowing to come. Which kind of concerns me because I hear they get going at 5:30 a.m. every morning.