1 of 4
Bruce Ingram
Little Jerry
Little Jerry has a strong sense of domain over the hens, including aggressively crowing at any male who is not his owner.
2 of 4
Bruce Ingram
Little Jerry and Hen
Little Jerry has a strong sense of domain over the hens, including aggressively crowing at any male who is not his owner.
3 of 4
Bruce Ingram
New Coop
The day the henhouse got painted red, the flock spent the day staring at it.
4 of 4
Bruce Ingram
Little Jerry
Little Jerry has a strong sense of domain over the hens, including aggressively crowing at any male who is not his owner.
It’s hard to say which was the biggest crisis and earned the most vocal response from Little Jerry: the morning a toad entered the run; the evening a mockingbird perched on a post; the day a butterfly flew over; or maybe even the day that the late, unlamented Russell bit Violet.
For all of these worldly conflicts, Little Jerry responded with a loud alarm call - sort of an aggressive “whirrrrrrrr.” But I would have to say that the most anguished, nay guttural sound of misery, the loud “auggghhhh” that Little Jerry vocalized was the day I learned that he could count to four but not five.
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Little Jerry is a rooster and master of five hens, as May-a-year-ago my wife Elaine and I began raising Rhode Island Reds, bringing home a Happy Meals-size box of two-day-old chicks that Elaine dubbed her “chicken nuggets.”
A major goal for us was to eventually be able to enjoy farm fresh eggs, but that objective was somewhat compromised when six of our eight rapidly growing young chickens began crowing. The situation was made worse when the cockerels commenced fighting among themselves for the attention of the two females who Elaine had named Ruby (for her reddish color) and Little Spotted Hen (for her splotchy chest).
My spouse also gave the male sextet their titles (her reasoning in parentheses): Russell (Elaine claimed he told her his name was Russell), Little Jerry (for the hapless and doomed fighting cock in a Seinfeld episode) First Crower (self-explanatory), Elvis (for his slicked-back neck feathers) Little Richard (stylish crower) and Third Man (who daily duked it out with Russell and Little Jerry for the alpha male position).
Trying to correct the sexual bias issue, we bought three young hens: Tallulah (she has a rather expansive rear that sports white feathers), Dot (white spot on her back) and Violet (who is no shrinking violet and whines constantly about anything and everything). However, the purchases only made coop conflicts worse as the males merely had more females to fight over, and Ruby quickly decided that although she was younger and smaller than the new trio, her mission in life was to chase the threesome around the chicken run.
Soon it became apparent that the rural axiom that “there can only be one rooster in the barnyard” had to be implemented. Elaine voted for Russell because he regularly whipped Little Jerry and typically fought to a draw with Third Man, who also thrashed Jerry.
I advocated for Little Jerry, stating that he was the only rooster that had been nice to the new hens when they arrived, even chaperoning them into the hen house their first night. Additionally, Jerry alone among the cockerels regularly patrolled the run, looking for danger lurking outside – sounding the alarm even if the perceived threat was a rabbit or a curious squirrel. I also explained that Little Jerry was a lover not a fighter and he would be a good shepherd for the ladies.
Russell’s fate became sealed the day he bit Violet one morning and then crowed about it. Even Elaine admitted that this was unacceptable; Third Man was swapped for three dozen eggs, and one by one the other cockerels took one-way trips with me behind the woodpile.
Now peace reigns in our backyard, except for the occasional calamity. One day, Little Jerry bit off the head of a snake that had entered the run; he aggressively crows at any human male besides me who enters our yard, curiously not reacting belligerently toward female strangers – I told you he was a lover not a fighter – and he recently broke up a fight between Ruby and Violet over a bug, stepping between them and, Solomon-like, eating the bug himself.
The biggest emergency, though, came the day when both Dot and Ruby decided at the same time to lay eggs inside the henhouse, and the distraught Jerry came to me and sounded a loud “auggghhhh,” communicating that his hens had run off and left him, as only three hens were visible to him. I swear that he can count to four but any number over that causes him to become hopelessly confused.
The only problem Little Jerry has now is that he wants to be the last chicken inside the henhouse at night, so he can make one final tour of duty around his kingdom. Violet, though, whining at the injustice of being closed up in the coop, refuses to come inside until last. I’m confident Little Jerry will eventually solve this issue as he has the others of his domain.
Heritage Chickens
If you want to gather fresh eggs (they’re higher in healthy Omega-3 fatty acids than factory farm produced eggs) and raise breeds of chickens popular in the Blue Ridge Mountains (my Franklin County ancestors and Elaine’s Ashe County, N.C. forebears both raised Rhode Island Reds), check out this website:
albc-usa.org/heritagechicken/index.html