TropicalChickies
Crowing
Reading over what I posted yesterday, I realize it sounds like I'm really trying to psychoanalyze this -- bird. Maybe this and maybe that. Fercrissakes, I need to get a hold of myself. These chickens are going to turn me into a drooling idiot.That could be, he remembers her coming out and now doesn't see her and of course, doesn't understand.They are so complex.
In my limited experience of 4 years of chicken keeping, I can definitely concur with those who say that "chickens do not handle stress very well." And it seems like change, any change, is stressful to chickens. I do my best to keep stress to a minimum. I don't bring in new birds often. I allow broodies to hatch eggs. Regular feeding times, clean and appropriate housing, plenty of space, forage, and sunshine. But in a multigenerational mixed flock, there are going to be stressors out of my control that the chickens have to deal with. Deaths. Fights. Their own politics. And some of that stress will get taken out on me, their dear Food Lady and Poop Scooper.
Of course I have no idea how a 10 mo old cockerel processes the absence of a hen he has mated, and probably neither does anyone else. Maybe he's confused/upset. But in this case, I think his nastiness with me is a lot more about hierarchy and his drive to further his genes than anything else. (To quote our gracious host @Shadrach)
I'm not saying a 10 mo old cockerel is incapable of feeling loss. If say, Rusty, Lucio's first mate and inseparable sidekick, were to disappear, he might react differently.
Butchie's case was unique because, unlike the other hens who are all unequivocally HIS, Butchie was mine. Lucio would watch me most intently when I carried her over to the outdoor sink for a butt cleaning. And he would furtively lurk around looking for a chance to mate her if I set her down to forage a little grass seed.
If she was tired or her crop was slow, I would take her directly back to the kitchen. Don't think I couldn't feel the holes being burned in my back as the Mad General glared from the thicket... He accepted that she was my hen, but he didn't like it. At all.
Last night I looked over some photos in my phone. There are several where I walked right up to Lucio and his hens to take a picture and he was perfectly calm. The last photo was from the day before Butchie "disappeared."
Lucio's subsequent moves since the unsuccessful mating and wooing attempt towards me have felt much more like he's looking for a fight. Chasing, flying at me, flogging etc. He also runs up at glares at me when I go to shovel his and his concubines excrement from under their roost. This is also a new hostility. He gives a warning cackle every time I step out of own house. It's like he suddenly doesn't want me around. At all.
^I just snapped these a few steps outside my kitchen. As soon as Lucio sees me, he moves towards me, posturing, flapping his wings. A week ago, I was able to walk right up to him and take a close up picture. Now he wants to flog the phone...
It's perfectly understandable. Roosters are driven to procreate and take over territory. They are all about that.
Lucio did have some stress growing up. He matured more slowly than his brother Paco, who mated and crowed first. His mother bullied him harshly after weaning. Then -- in a story I've told before -- his mother literally dropped dead (probable heart attack from reproductive disorder) and his brother drowned in a pond on the same day.
But that was months ago, and he's been the Lord of All Creation since. I think he's much more threatened by recent changes than any deep-seated trauma.
I agree that growing cockerels and roosters are proud, noble and very brave. The other day, Frida was alarmed by something and Lucio covered the distance to her in a flash. He is almost absurdly generous to his hens. Any morsel I try to offer him for himself, he gabbles and nods at the ground until a hen comes to get it. But he's also temperamental, insolent and a bit rash -- probably the youth factor. What is he thinking when runs up on my boot heels right outside my house while two of my dogs lounge in the doorway? Leaving his hens alone in the meantime? Seriously, if Lucio doesn't get wiser with age, I will think twice before keeping any of his male offspring. I'm absolutely for breeding males with strength and bravery, but I won't deliberately propagate foolish blowhards.
To be fair, I also see hens in the same realistic way. Those who lived longer or needed special care I developed closer relationships with and they became more pet "like". Some hens became more receptive to being held and "cuddles", but I think it's because they made an association that I eased their pain or discomfort. Not because they inherently love people or believe we love them. How could they? We eat them. We cage them. We slaughter their sons and subject them to the most cruel tortures for the sake of production, demand, efficiency.
Wariness of humans should be encoded in their genetic memory at this point and any chicken -- male or female -- that just "loves cuddles" is not wired right, again IMHO.
Hens are also fiercely competitive in their own ways. And they are the world's best mothers -- until they are not. And as Shad says, that is distressing to see. But why, in the grand scheme of things, should they go on caring for offspring they've taught to fend for themselves? More human parents could do the same. (I'm thinking of my younger brother who still had my poor martyred mother doing his laundry when he was 24.
I do care for these animals very much. But with the exceptions of those who needed and accepted special care, the charming cuddly wuddly view is not one I take often. They are tribal in the whole sense of the word: close knit and cooperative within their own social rules, and clannish, competitive and territorial. As Oscar Wilde said, Illusion is the first of all pleasures. Keeping chickens has definitely stripped away my illusions about them. But there is still a great deal of value in seeing them for who they are.
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