The piece below was written last year for my paid subscribers. An example of the extras you will enjoy on special Saturday posts. Cabin Confidential writing, my personal stories about building an off-grid life with my dear Ordell, has been on hiatus during our busy summer season but will be making a splashy comeback soon.
In the meantime, enjoy An Ode to the Rooster.
I was out of the house and on the road this morning before first light to go pick up a new rooster.
Did you know that close to 100% of male baby chickens are killed on their first day of life?
It’s shocking how little most of us know about how food gets to our shopping carts. Even the higher-class shopping carts of Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. We may feel like we understand what the terms free range and organic mean, but the reality is, big food is a giant machine complex that operates behind a curtain. Even the people who really care about the animals they eat become overwhelmed at the sheer bigness of its problems.
I was raised to understand animal husbandry and the farming cycle of life. When our father invested in a small herd of cattle, I remember that he let us name them, but only if one was clearly named Hamburger.
So, I have never been up on a soap box for animal rights. I have never considered going vegetarian or, heaven forbid, vegan. Life makes no sense without cheese and butter.
But I watched a little video last week from the people at Alchemist Farm and that’s when I learned about the almost 100%. I feel silly for having not known. As a backyard chicken raiser, I understand rooster culture pretty well.
Roosters are assholes.
I can’t pick a better word for it. Asshole fits.
I have been subjected to behind the knee sneak attacks enough times to know that you never turn your back on a rooster. Even a friendly one. You just never can tell when they will go cocky on you. Roosters are where the words cocky, cocksure, and cock of the walk came from.
They live in a perpetual state of bodyguard brain. They are the arrogant bouncer at the door. The Praetorian guards of the chicken coop. And put two together in one flock and watch them turn a peaceful yard into a voluntary and bloody cockfight.
But hens love roosters.
They respond immediately to the masculine energy. Within minutes of introducing my new rooster to his flock of fourteen, they had submitted willingly to his conjugal overtures. He had his way with four of them before I had time to feed them all breakfast.
The reason I was picking up a rooster the other morning is because our flock was directionless since their last old man died in the depths of winter.
Chickens organize into very specific and changing hierarchies. They are not democratic. They have kings, queens, and serfs. It’s fascinating to watch them organize. And then re-organize. Without their rooster, no one could decide where to roost correctly at night. Two hens always seemed to end up on the floor of the coop, which is not a healthy way to sleep. Robert does a head count every night as he puts them to bed. The first night with their new rooster and every bird was lined up nice and orderly, every bird comfortable in its spot.
Are roosters the perfect example of toxic masculinity?
I have a working theory that they have an overabundance of testosterone and that can translate into acts that defy common sense. Like a warrior in the throes of active combat, it can be hard to turn off the adrenaline during peacetime.
We have witnessed a rooster prepare to do battle with a moving car, staking out his warrior’s stance in the middle of the road. We have watched one race to defend his girls from an attacking dog. We have picked up the literal pieces of another who gave his life while saving the flock from a nighttime raccoon marauder.
Roosters have one eye peeled up to the sky, at all times. When a circling hawk is spotted, he uses his specific rooster voice to send the hens scurrying to the nearest bush for cover.
And my personal favorite, our new sheriff in town has a unique vocal style of trilling as he guards his foraging hens. It’s hard to describe. I must capture the sound on video for you.
Let’s go back to the 100% for a moment. Industrial farming, like any process that has become too streamlined and too efficient, has long ago lost its nuance. The nuance of letting a chicken do chicken things. Chickens are built to forage all day long. And the very definition of the word husbandry stems from to care for.
Franchesca, the woman who started Alchemist Farm became haunted at learning of the mass genocide by incineration of the one-day old roosters. But instead of going to battle with the world, because make no mistake about the size of industrial farming; it is as big as the whole world. Instead, she took the bit of land that she stands on and built a small, specialized breeding operation where every rooster gets to live to see another day. She is not changing the world with her roosters, who are mostly given to migrant workers for eating or people like me, who happen to need one, but she is changing the story in front of her. And her Instagram videos are addictive and a great way to learn about chicken husbandry.
The way I see it, change is most effective when it happens in small ways, in your own backyard. I have ordered ten peeps from Alchemist Farm. They will travel by mail to Whitsett in May.
Let me address one last sticky problem for those of you reading who understand the big picture of farming. It’s true, roosters are kind of useless in an industrial setting. They can’t be raised for eggs or tender chicken cutlets. They are the reason the French invented the famous coq a vin (literally translated to cock in wine). The wine and long cook time breaks down the tough flesh of a bird that spent its life working, protecting, and sacrificing.
The let’s put him in a pot scene from Cold Mountain explains the rooster’s plight in two minutes and you get to watch the brilliant Renee Zellweger and Nicole Kidman at the same time.
Roosters have it rough no matter where they are born. If they get to live past their first day, their lives are short, brutal and full of constant vigilance. But they can serve a purpose. The first time I heard Joel Salatin explain the miracle of letting animals do their particular animal things, my brain could not unsee it. I think about his vision for a small farm future every time I watch my birds scratch their way through the woods near The Ruins. They eat bugs, worms, ticks, and weeds all day long. And their uber orange egg yolks are one of the happy results.
Give Alchemist Farm a listen, or follow, and the many small operations like it that are being unearthed with love around the world. A perfect way to do your own kind of battle for the future of small farming.
Who knows…maybe this little bit of optimism will even convince you to take the leap and order some chicks of your own!
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Thank you for being here, as I work to unearth optimism.
Some days with a hammer, some days with a shovel. And some days with a pen.
Thank you for the information on Roosters. Very sad indeed! I have had chickens before but never a rooster! I love there morning calls through the woods in the mornings from others yards!
Absolutely fantastic article!! I not only thoroughly enjoyed it, I learned a lot!
We are surrounded by eggs of all kinds and they all have a story.