A Real Who-Dunnit

Last night while I was on the phone with a lady about a goat (oh, I am SUCH a farmer!) Dustin came tearing into the house yelling my name over and over. My first thought was that the Copperhead has made another appearance and has perhaps succeeded in eating our firstborn. As I threw down the phone, he said, "Our rooster is crowing!" This is a big deal. We have been waiting for one of our roosters to figure out he can crow for quite some time now. Apparently, Dustin and Ayden had been playing soccer near the chicken coop when all of a sudden they heard a creature being murdered within the dark confines of the coop. It sounded something like "crOOOOOOOAArk-k-k". It took Dustin a minute to figure out what it was, but he soon decided it must be an attempt at the fabled Cock-a-doodle-doo that Ayden has told us roosters do. We were not convinced, until now. The real question is, which one is it? The big beautiful black Wyandotte rooster or my gorgeous white Ameracauna rooster?

Obviously, my first order of business this morning was to capture the blessed event on video. I did not think this would be hard, as I must have heard it 20 times if I heard it once in the time it took to load Ayden in the car this morning before taking him to school. When I got home I ran inside for the camera and posted myself just outside the window of the coop. Not a peep. Nada. Nothin. So, camera in hand, I went to milk the goats and decided this is as good a time as any to capture that on video.

The chicken antics I mentioned are as follows. I set my milking tote down while I stepped inside the goat pen to give Lucy and Louie their grain then lock them out in the back pasture. No sooner had I done this, than a chicken had jumped up and was in the process of pecking at the coffee filter on my milking jar. Ahhh! Here's a picture to prove it. You can see her friend in the background sitting on top of the fence, which is their new favorite thing to do. I shoo that chicken away, and as I grab my milk tote and head into the goat pen to milk Tierra, who is waiting ever so patiently for me, I spy a black chicken who has locked herself out in the pasture with Lucy and Louie, and is successfully stealing their grain. That is one brave chicken. As any of you who own goats know, they are serious when it comes to their grain.

After milking, I decided to stalk the chickens for a while and try to capture the elusive crowing rooster. While entirely and disgustingly unsuccessful at that, I did manage to capture some rather incriminating evidence all the same.

I told you! What did I say? That brown chicken has it in for my feet. Thank goodness I have a solid layer of rubber between my tasty soft tootsies and her. While observing the chickens I also witnessed a near chicken-rape. I was staking out the large black rooster when he noticed that one of the hens had laid down for a moment for a rest. He went running full tilt across the yard and pounced. I saw him coming, and I saw the lustful glint in his eye, so I scrambled to turn the camera on in time, but alas, he was too quick for me. He pounced, she screamed, he fell off of her, she ran a few feet away, and then they both partook in a bit of feather ruffling. They shook it off, so to speak.

With this episode in mind, I cast a fearful eye on Ambrose lounging amongst the chickens. I tried to explain to him what had just happened to this poor unsuspecting hen when she mistakenly chose to lie down on the job, but he would not listen. He rolled over and exposed his soft underbelly to me, taunting the chickens. Here's what happened.

Ok, so its not as exciting as it could have been if the rooster would have been feeling trans-species-amorous, but nonetheless, it goes to show that I was not lying when I said he loves the chickens.

To conclude, I am accepting bets on which rooster possesses the death-rattle crow. I am giving 4:1 odds that it is the larger black Wyandotte rooster. I hope to catch the "crow" if it can be called that, on video this evening when they all go to bed. We'll see.