As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve got a mixed bag of “past-their-prime” chickens: Black Australorp, Rhode Island Red, and Easter Egger in our original flock (6 hens almost 4 years old and laying 3-5 eggs daily) and Brahma, Orpington, Barred Rock, and Polish in a group of “freebees” we acquired back in January (9 hens, all between 2 and 3 years old).
In the “freebee flock,” we’ve got 2 White Crested Black Polish, and I’m pretty certain they are actually bantams, as they are extremely small and lay the cutest little “egglets.”
The other morning, I was standing in the kitchen making coffee having just sent my husband off to the big city to bring home the bacon while I lounged around watching soap operas and eating bonbons all day. All of a sudden, I heard a rooster crowing in the front yard near the chickens. I distinctly heard it, not once, not twice, but three times. It wasn’t the throaty, self-assured crow of a seasoned cock of the walk, but rather the somewhat scratchy, “trying it on for size” crow of a juvenile lad whose voice had not quite changed completely yet. The thing of it is…we don’t have any roosters. Or do we? A stray? Could one of the “freebees” be a “he” instead of a “she?”
Sorely tempted to call City Hall to lodge a complaint (because that’s apparently what one does in these parts), I realized that – since the would-be rooster was in my yard – filing a complaint with City Hall probably wasn’t going to accomplish much. Besides, I live in Unincorporated King County (Thank God!) So, I opted to phone my husband instead.
“Honey…I think we have a rooster in our yard.”
Having only made it a few miles from home, my amazingly wonderful and patient husband turned around and came back to investigate. No rooster…no crowing…just a bunch of bitchy hens clamoring to get out of their coops. Was I losing it?
This morning, I once again found myself standing in the kitchen making coffee when – once again – I heard the “rooster” crowing: once…twice…three times… This time, however, my husband was home, and he heard it too!
With the hens still confined to their coops, we isolated the particular coop from which the crowing was coming, and by process of elimination, we identified the individual bird causing all the uproar. It was one of the Polish banties.
Suitably clueless about such things, we did what every self-respecting 21st-century-over-educated-upper-middle-class-software-professional-homesteading couple does: we Googled it. Based on what we discovered and the fact that we often get 2 “egglets” daily, we are confident that we do, in fact, have 2 Polish hens and no roosters. We live and learn.
In the meantime, our little Polish banty continues to crow her little heart out. (Her mother should have insisted that she play with dolls instead of GI Joe when she was a chick).