Lori and I have a small flock of chickens on our little farm outside Lone Oak, Texas. I have to tell you, we love our chickens. We had them in Forney where they were confined to the back yard. Even then, we lost a couple of our hens to a hawk. It was a very traumatic experience, especially for our granddaughter.
Since we moved to the country, we have let our chickens free range and it has been amazing how little we have had to feed them and how happy they seem to be to forage around our barn for bugs, grass and whatever else chickens eat. That arrangement worked fine for the first several months since we moved here. Then we lost a chicken. Then a few days later we lost another. I decided to take action.
When they lived in our backyard in Forney, we didn’t see a need to keep a rooster; they are far too noisy. However, at our new place, I saw the need to get a big rooster to afford some protection our little egg factories. A neighbor listed a post on Facebook that they had one too many roosters and needed to give one away. Lori and I decided to take them up on the offer. And that is how our newest chicken, MC, became part of our family of poultry. He was named MC by his previous owners and when I asked what MC stood for, they told me: “Man Chicken”. They also said that he was a sweet rooster and would eat out of your hand and that turned out to be true on both counts. I brought him home in a pet carrier and he rode to his new home in peace. He was quiet all the way as I carried him to the barn out back. That is, until he saw and heard our hens. Then he caused quite the commotion wanting to get out. I let him out and let him introduce himself to the ladies. They were standoffish and cautious as ladies are, but MC soon became the Alpha Chicken in the flock (if you don’t count Lori and me.)
Everything was fine for a couple of weeks, then hens started disappearing. Not just one, but two and three at a time. I went to the back pasture and found several telltale piles of feathers where our sweet girls had met their demise. But how?
We got down to five hens and MC, then one morning another hen disappeared. After the discovery, I went to town for breakfast and, when I came back, I noticed one of the white hens right by our backyard fence, a long way from the barn where they usually ranged. As I walked toward her, I noticed something move out of the corner of my eye. It was MC running as fast as he could with a big coyote chasing right behind him. The chicken killing predator came within yards of me and only gave up the chase when I yelled at him. I went in the house and grabbed my gun but he had already disappeared into the woods at the back of our place.
Lori and I went to the barn and took inventory. I seemed that the only two chickens that were still alive were the one I had seen by the fence and MC. When I told my daughter Tabi (the chicken whisperer) what had happened, she said that the hens might still be hiding from the coyote. Later that night we found that Tabi had been correct because when the chickens came home to roost there were three of them in the coop. However, MC and the white one that was by the fence didn’t come home.
The next day Lori came into the house with MC under her arm, alive but not altogether well. He had a big wound on his back, obviously from the coyote attack. The other hen he had been with never came home. We doctored his back with triple antibiotic and locked him in the chicken coop, terminating their free-range privileges for the time being.
After we had time to piece together what had transpired, we surmised that MC had tried his best to defend his hens and was almost killed himself. However, in doing so, he gave the other chickens time to hide and get away. The three that we still have are probably alive because of the valiant efforts of Road Island Red Rooster, MC. It turns out, sometimes a hero is a chicken.
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