Two Cylinder Magazine

Chickens
by Howard Anderson

It was Saturday morning in the spring of about 1954. While we were eating breakfast, Dad said, “We’re going to clean the chicken house this morning while it’s still cool outside.” Cleaning the chicken house was always an unpleasant task, but Dad had said “We,” not “You boys,” are going to clean the chicken house. Our father was not one to assign Ray and I an unpleasant task while he went off to do something else. He taught us to work on the farm by working with us.

The author (right) at age one, with his two-year-old brother, Ray. The trailer (upper left) and chickens would become part of their future.

The chicken house was one of the smaller buildings on the farm. It had a slanting single-slope, shed-type roof with large south-facing windows. Dad said chicken houses were usually built this way so the chickens could obtain the maximum amount of light in the winter months. If I remember correctly, their egg-laying productivity was best if they were exposed to sunlight during the day time.

While finishing my breakfast, which ironically included eggs, I began thinking about the annual cycle of chickens on our family farm…

At about 11:00 a.m., six days a week, the mailman delivered the mail and daily newspaper to the mailbox by the farmyard driveway on the county road. If we had something for him to take away, we would raise the little red metal flag attached to the mailbox. If the red flag wasn’t up and the mailman had nothing to deliver to us, he would drive on by. If the mailman had a special delivery, which was very rare on the farm, he would drive into the farmyard and stop by the back door of the house. Such was the case on the day of the “chicken delivery.” We’re not talking about fast-food chicken delivery; that didn’t exist when I was a young boy.

Some farmers used their own hens to lay eggs for hatching, but my parents didn’t. Each spring, Mom and Dad would order 100 baby chicks, which were often delivered by the postal service in a large flat cardboard box. I have no idea what hatchery these fluffy, little, yellow peepers came from, but the arrival of the new chicks provided some real excitement for a young child growing up on the farm. The baby chicks had to be watered, fed, and kept warm. Dad would hook up heat lamps in one part of the chicken house where the baby chicks would huddle together to stay warm.

The author at age three in the summer of 1944.

The chickens provided a source of entertainment for us until we were old enough to care for them. Against the will of our parents, we would try to catch the adult chickens by running after them. It just wasn’t possible for a young child to catch a full grown chicken by running. Chickens could run faster than we could, and they could even fly for short distances. With experience, we learned our only chance to capture chickens was to slowly sneak up on them and grab them when they weren’t expecting it. Occasionally we were successful. However, chickens weren’t so much fun once we became responsible for their care.

The first farm chores assigned to a child were usually the chicken chores. I once thought that was because the chickens were smaller than the other farm animals. I suppose that was part of it, but I later decided it had more to do with the general nature of a chicken. Chickens were stinky, noisy, dull, and spooky. Why would an adult tend to the chickens when these chores could so easily be assigned to a child? Nothing smelled worse than the methane gas emitted by fermenting chicken manure, especially in the spring of the year when the weather began to warm outside and the chickens had been inside all winter.

This thought about nauseating chicken manure jolted me back to thinking about our planned morning activity. After breakfast, Dad told Ray and me to get the “A” John Deere Tractor and four-wheeled trailer for use in cleaning the chicken house. We didn’t own a manure spreader.

Dad had purchased a new 1940 Model “A” in February of 1941. He was able to buy the four-speed model quite a bit cheaper than a 1941 six-speed tractor. While I filled the fuel tanks, Ray checked the oil and radiator. He closed the drain valve on the carburetor, turned the fuel lever to the gas position, opened the petcocks, closed the choke, and made certain the tractor was in neutral. When I finished filling the fuel and gas tanks, Ray turned the flywheel. The tractor fired on the first turn, but didn’t start. He opened the choke and turned the flywheel again. This time the tractor started. We closed the petcocks. Ray climbed up on the tractor seat and I stood on the drawbar as we headed for the barnyard to get the trailer.

On the way to the barnyard, Ray drove the tractor toward the chicken flock, scattering them in all directions. He didn’t like the chickens, but I think he would have felt badly if he had actually hit one of them. Mom saw him do that and later scolded him for it. When we got to the barnyard gate, I got off the tractor, opened the gate, and closed it after he drove through. While he was hooking up the trailer, I walked over to the barn to pick up some pitchforks.

After driving back through the opened gate, Ray drove the tractor and trailer up close to the chicken house and turned off the fuel on the tractor. Most of the chickens were out of the chicken house when we went in to clean. During the summer months, the chickens roosted in the chicken house at night and laid their eggs early in the morning. The rest of the time they were outside foraging and scratching in the dirt.

Sometimes in the winter, when a person entered the chicken house too quickly or noisily, one startled chicken would squawk and flutter, scaring the other eighty or ninety chickens into the same behavior. After a few seconds they would settle down and begin strutting around clucking and gawking as if to say, “What was that all about?” I think it would be fair to say that chickens are not deep thinkers.

Ray, Dad, and I proceeded to clean the manure from the chicken house. It hadn’t been cleaned since before the heavy snow fall several months earlier. The methane-gas-saturated manure was nearly a foot thick in some places under the roosts. We took turns forking the manure up to the open chicken house door, while the third person loaded it onto the trailer. While we were working, I again began thinking about when I first started doing chicken chores…

When I became old enough to have responsibility for the chicken chores, each day after school I would gather the eggs, feed the chickens, and make certain they had oyster shells and water. The ground oyster shells were a necessary part of their diet to prevent the eggs from having thin or soft shells, especially in the winter when the chickens were inside.

The author still liked chickens in late fall of 1944,

If the chickens didn’t have water in their watering trays in the summertime, they would attempt to drink from the stock tank in the cow pasture. Occasionally, a chicken would fall into the tank and drown. The person that had been assigned the chicken chores was held responsible for the drowning. Guilt trip! We were reminded, “If the chickens had been properly cared for, they wouldn’t be trying to drink from the stock tank.”

The cows and horses were confined to the barn or to their own pasture by fences. The pigs had a small barn and their own small fenced pasture. But, the chickens had the run of the entire farmyard. The building where the chickens slept and laid their eggs wasn’t even called a barn — it was called a house: The chicken house. I couldn’t really understand that. How did anything so dumb as a chicken become elevated to such a high status? Not only did the chickens go anywhere in the farmyard except inside our house, so did their droppings. Every time we played on the lawn in the farmyard, we ended up with stinky chicken droppings on our hands, feet, elbows, and knees. The chickens liked to use our sandbox for a toilet, too.

After we finished loading the chicken manure onto the trailer, Ray again started the “A” and drove it into the barnyard where we cleaned the cow barn, loading that mess onto the same trailer. Meanwhile, our little brother, Ron, who was about five years old at the time, came out to “help” us unload the manure in the pasture. Ray liked to drive the tractor. Dad, Ron, and I rode on the trailer into the pasture where we were going to fork off the manure. Nobody was saying much. The only sound was the putt-putt of the Model “A”. Watching the rear wheels of the tractor turning was not unlike watching ocean waves or watching a campfire… mesmerizing. Again I began thinking about how a part of our lives on the farm was associated with the chickens.

As I got older, the chickens became my least favorite farm animal — I liked them best when they were babies, and when they were full-grown chickens, cooked and served for a meal. Once the young hens (called pullets) began laying eggs, the old hens were butchered, roasted, and eaten. The young roosters were also culled out of the flock of new chickens when they were large enough to be butchered and eaten.

After butchering, some of the old hens were cut into pieces, placed in quart jars, and canned for consumption during the winter months. Mom and Grandma used to make the best homemade chicken noodle soup from those canned chickens and Grandma’s homemade egg noodles. That was my favorite. Ray preferred chicken and potato dumplings. Dad liked them both; however, he didn’t often state his preferences like Ray and I did.

Dad would catch the chickens that were to be slaughtered by using a long wooden stick that had a hook made out of stiff telephone wire attached to one end. The hook was large enough to slip over the chicken’s leg but small enough to trap the foot. As much as I disliked the chickens, I didn’t like to watch when Dad laid them on a block of wood and chopped off their heads with an ax. After the heads were removed, Dad would place the chickens on the ground, whereby they would immediately get up and start running around. I couldn’t understand how a chicken could still run and flop around after its head had been removed. They were almost as smart without a head as they were with a head. I suppose that says something about the IQ of chickens, as well as confirms the notions I’ve had about them all along.

After the headless chickens gave up and laid down, Mom would dip them in scalding water, after which she would remove the feathers, feet, and innards, saving the hearts and the gizzards. The odor of dipped chickens, followed by singeing off the tiny, unpluckable feathers over the heat of the kitchen stove, leaves an indelible disagreeable memory imprinted in the smell-sensory portion of your brain, second only to the smell of chicken manure. However, it was at this point when a marvelous transformation seemed to take place; the chicken was no longer an animal. Now it was food that was to be cooked and eaten.

Mom would salt and pepper the chicken before browning it in a cast iron fry pan on the wood- and coal-fired kitchen cookstove. She would save the drippings for gravy after placing the chicken in the oven to bake for awhile. The chicken wasn’t done until the meat was literally falling off the bone. The gravy was made by stirring a couple of tablespoons of flour into the chicken fat and the lard that had been used for browning the chicken, followed by adding some of the water poured off the boiled potatoes. After mashing the potatoes with whole milk and butter, they were served with the chicken and gravy and a vegetable. The vegetable, which had been grown in the farm garden, was most often prepared and served in a white sauce. The main course was typically followed by a large piece of chocolate cake covered with thick chocolate icing. That had to be about the best meal in the whole world; I still start drooling just thinking about it.

At that point, cleaning that chicken house didn’t seem so bad after all.