Don’t be hen-pecked Butch. Keep your pecker up!

“What’s in the bag Dad?”

“Chickens Wilson.”  To give the boy credit, he didn’t even look surprised.  Like there was nothing more normal than dad walking through the house with a sack of live chickens.

That was two months ago.  They settled in, they’re all laying and they all seem happy.  Intentionally we don’t have a rooster.  We had one when we kept chickens in New York but decided that we didn’t want one this time so we’d stand a chance of sleeping.  Yesterday Leonel our gardener suggested that we might want to breed the chickens.  He had a rooster and he could lend it to us.  This morning the rooster arrived in a  bag on the back of a motorbike and introductions were made.

I have to admit that I was hazy on exactly how this breeding thing would work.  I know you don’t need a rooster for chickens to lay.  They just lay infertile eggs.  I also know the basics, thank you, of the mechanics of this process.  I know that we need the rooster to find a girlfriend and get married.  Oh hang on, that’s Wilson’s theory on how this works.  Don’t worry, I don’t just rely on Wilson at age six for the facts of life.  Google found me all the answers.

A chicken lays an egg a day, or every couple of days.  This much I knew but what I didn’t realize is that the chicken has a full cycle everyday.  Because an egg is a large thing for a chicken to make, I wondered if the chicken was working on more than one at a time in its system – a production line as it were.  It seems not.  The chicken ovulates every day and makes the egg from start to finish.  Every day that bird has a cycle!  I’m not going to make any comments about this, but imagine that.  One a day, rather than one a month!  As the egg moves through the body the yolk forms, the white, the shell etc.  Early on in the process, after the yolk forms, is when the egg is fertilized, if the henhouse has a rooster to take on this responsibility.

I went on to explain the process to Jen.  ”So the male mates with the chicken …”  ”Is she a willing participant?”  she asked.  I have no idea.  I doubt it.  Anyway, the rooster ‘does its thing’ shall we say.  The sperm is contained in a membrane – a bit like a slow release capsule.  The female stores this in her reproductive  tract and is able to use it to fertilize eggs over a period of a week or more.  A pretty efficient way of making sure she doesn’t have to do the deed more than is absolutely necessary if you ask me.  Also, it gives the rooster longer to get back round to her again.  He’d be tired out and shooting blanks if every egg had to be fertilized every day for every female in a flock.  It would probably shorten his life, but presumably he’d die happy.  Assuming our rooster gets to work, our eggs should be fully loaded within two or three days and each chicken could lay half a dozen or more fertile eggs.

The big question is whether or not Leonel’s rooster is getting down to it?  Leonel is worried that the rooster he brought is not butch enough.  I must admit when I first saw it I thought it looked kind of girlie.  There’s no big comb on its head or big tail feather, or barbs on its legs.  It’s kind of weedy looking.  But I know looks aren’t everything and maybe he packs a punch as it were.  Leonel says they call such birds ‘gallo-gallinas’, ‘rooster-chickens’ because it’s a boy that looks like a girl.  He reckoned he might bring his other rooster tomorrow, who is more ‘fuerte’.  I think he worries that his rooster’s performance is a direct reflection of his own masculinity.  I said we could give it more time.  Maybe he didn’t like Leonel following him, watching him and had performance anxiety?  Maybe he was still recovering from the ride on the motorbike in a bag?  Maybe he wanted to get to know the girls first?  I asked if there had been activity this morning.  Leonel said one so far.  Well that explains it I said, he needs time to recharge!

Just call him "Butch".