Goodbye Cosmo

We are very sad to announce that Cosmo, the rooster, is gone.

Cosmo joined Several Gardens Farm as a young rooster back in 2003, as part of a group of bantam chickens given to us by neighborhood children. We did not know his age at the time, but we estimate he was between 7 and 12 months.

He was our faithful rooster for eleven years. Few humans could have show the courage, generosity or loyalty he did. He never ate anything until his hens had been given first choice. He never ran from danger until the flock had made good its escape. Then he would run screaming from his predator, diverting them from everything but the red comet of noise he could become.

He never knew how tiny he was. He took on fights with stray roosters in the neighborhood, with a huge drake duck, with his own evil and ungrateful son. Never once in his life did he win a fight. We often had to rescue him. But he was always gentle with people, to the point of letting kids pull on his feathers or cuddle him like a baby.

He never abandoned his hens, even if it meant being constantly beaten by another rooster, or stalked by a cat. He knew his duty. Once a foolish hen flew into the neighbor's yard and was attacked by their dog. Cosmo went in to get her. I went in to get him, too late for the hen.

This summer he slowed down. He became too weak to climb up to the perch and began to sleep in a nest instead. He stopped leaving the barn, except to eat, drink or sit in the sunlight. Courting the hens was ancient history.

Then about a week ago, he started wandering off. He had a very strong sense of place, and never left the yard, but suddenly he was showing up at the neighbors. He was losing weight, and looking wrinkled in his skin. His crop was never full any more, as though he had stopped eating.

I began to lock him up at night, which I had never done before. Then we locked him up in the days, too, as he couldn't stop wandering. But it was a strange wandering - he would sit still for hours, then walk off to the fence line, where he would huddle miserably. I began to make plans for his end of life. I could see it was soon. While it would have been nice for him to peacefully pass, I was getting ready to bring him a quicker ending.

Then one day, I let him out to sun himself and went away for a bit. I came back and he was gone. Three days have past and we haven't seen or heard him.

A rooster doesn't hide. Can't hide. I am certain if he were alive, Cosmo would crow. I have hunted down every rooster cry in the neighborhood. I've discovered many, well loved roosters that I knew nothing about, but none of the crowing is Cosmo.

I have to conclude he has died. I never believed that animals 'went off to be alone to die', but I can see the logic for a rooster. As head of the flock, most roosters have a huge investment in the chicks that are their offspring, and in the well being of the hens who care for them. A weak, old, disoriented rooster could bring down predators on his whole flock. Walking away, letting them catch him far from his family, might be a last service he can give to the flock he has cared for so valiantly and well. I feel guilty and horrible for letting it happen but there's a certain sense in it.

To his great credit, Cosmo has made me a lifelong fan of roosters. I will find another one - many roosters need homes. I will try to find one as gentle, brave and devoted as our Cosmic Cosmo, and I will try to let him be his own rooster, instead of making him fill the giant shoes of his tiny predecessor.

Supper of the blue chicken

It was Friday, April 19. Traffic in Seattle seemed to be horrible in sympathy for the shut down streets of Boston.

Friends were meeting me at a Costco parking lot to give me an unwanted rooster to butcher.

I waited in my car, listening to endless radio chatter about what a sweetie pie this Dzhokhar Tzarnaev was supposed to be. Part of me was indignant. Fine, he was popular, but let's give this a rest, folks. If he really did plant a bomb next to an eight year old, we might want to revise our assessment here.

Another part was internalizing it. When I received the rooster, I was surprised to feel deeply conflicted in a way I had not felt before. "Oh, no." I thought "He's adorable. So cute. Every mother hen's dream for her little rooster. This can't be right." And indeed, the rooster was white and fluffy and proud and very handsome. Well - roosters are almost all handsome. Ask any rooster, he'll agree.

One theory why so many species of birds have attractive males is their beauty reflects good health. Hens prefer mates in tip top condition. They choose ones with perfect, glossy plumage and lots of it.

At any rate, one of the hard things about eating roosters is it seems wrong to destroy such a lovely creature - like vandalism almost. But that's objectifying a rooster and looking away from the real reason it should be hard. Taking a life, even for food, even humanely, shouldn't be easy or fun.

A rooster's looks don't always help him to a happy life and often get him in trouble. The more conspicuous, the more other roosters want to fight with them. The more predators try to eat them. This white rooster would be like a beacon to every hawk in North Burien. 

Before I butchered this little rooster, I had to take a long pause and sort this all out. I had to get distanced from the news, from the senselessness of it all, and my self pity at having to do this. Poor me? Poor bird, more like. Make this as dignified as you can, Sarah.

After a pause, I did. I held him until he relaxed, and then let him go. Then I began to pluck the roo. That's when I got my other surprise.

         Some chicken breeds are blue. 

Not their feathers, their skin. Their muscles. Blue. Really dark, gunmetal blue skin over lavender meat. With violet bones. 

I don't know why this shocked me so much but it did. I was worried my kid would freak about eating a blue chicken. But he thought it was cool and told me I was being silly. Still hedging, I put the rooster in the freezer for a couple of weeks while I figured out how to cook him.

It turns out yes, all silkies, regardless of feather color, are blue underneath. They are prized in Chinese medicine as an ingredient in a healing soup. Most accounts said they taste like chicken (no surprise) but are tough and stringy.

I don't like chicken soup. More specifically I can't even bring myself to eat it. I don't like how all the flavor leaves the chicken and goes into the water. I don't like the smell of boiled skin. The first time I cleaned a wound on one of my hens, her wet, plucked skin smelled like chicken soup.

So although I wanted to respect the culinary tradition, I decided I'd rather respect the chicken by cooking him in a way I would enjoy. And to celebrate the beauty of roosters, I decided to make a colorful meal.

I roasted the bird, and served him with homemade saffron egg noodles, rainbow chard and a dessert tart of meringue and strawberries. Only the tart was as colorful as we had hoped. The chicken, the chard and the noodles all lost their crayon-like vibrancy with cooking.

But Oh Dear Lord was that chicken delicious. I've been cooking and eating meat for the past year, and this is the first time I think I got it right. This chicken was tender as springtime and intensely flavorful.

I did well.

Recipes

Slow Roasted Free Range Silkie

1 silkie or other small, stringy chicken
2 quarts water or whey + 1/2 cup water divided (I used whey from draining Greek yogurt)
1/4 cup salt
1/4 cup sugar
1 sprig each - rosemary, sage
1 tsp butter

At least 24 hours in advance, prepare the brine by stirring the salt and the sugar into the whey or water.

Place the chicken in the brine - it should be covered. Weigh it down so the chicken is fully submerged.



5 hours before dinner, drain the chicken and discard the brine.

Preheat oven to 225

Dry the chicken well and rub skin with butter. For a free range chicken, use a lot of butter.

Place the herbs in the bird's cavity, and truss the legs and wings tight to the body.

Place the chicken on a rack in a roasting pan or dutch oven with a tight fitting lid.

Pour 1/4 cup water into the pan. Cover tightly and roast for 4 hours or till temperature reads 160 by the leg bone..

Remove lid and pour in 1/4 cup water if pan is dry.

Turn oven to 450. Roast for 15 minutes or until skin is crisp.

Remove pan from oven. Place chicken on a platter to rest, and set pan on stove. Don't clean that pan yet!

Saffron pasta ribbons

2 Cups flour
4 large egg yolks
1/2 t + 1t salt, divided
Boiling water
pinch saffron threads
1 T Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Snipped fresh rosemary to taste

Place saffron in a heat resistant bowl and pour 1/4 cup boiling water over. Let cool to room temperature.

Place flour and salt in food processor and pulse to combine.

Add egg yolks and water. Mix. It should form lots of small, granular lumps of stiff, tacky dough. When squeezed, dough should form a lump.

If it crumbles, add more water by the tablespoon, mixing well between additions, until it stays together when squeezed.

If the dough is even remotely sticky, add flour the same way - 1 T at a time, mixing between additions until it is non-sticky.

Briefly knead dough.

Using a pasta roller, and working in batches, roll out dough on setting 1. Fold and roll until it becomes very smooth and supple. The dough should be completely non-sticky.

Adjust setting to 2, and roll dough again. Continue to setting 5 or 6.

Then use the wide noodle setting to cut dough into strips.

Let noodles dry briefly (I hang them on plastic coat hangers).

Bring to boil a large pot of water. Add 1 t salt. Add noodles, a handful at a time, stirring constantly to prevent sticking.

After the last noodles go in, cook for five minutes.

Drain.

Place noodles, still damp, in the pan the chicken cooked in. Pour on olive oil and snipped rosemary.

Toss pasta so it picks up cooking flavors from the chicken.

Place in bowl and set chicken pieces over.

Meringue Tart with strawberries

4 egg whites
1 cup fine white sugar + extra to sprinkle
1 t vanilla
strawberries

Set oven to 275. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Place a plate on the paper and trace a circle.

Place egg whites in a very clean mixing bowl, and beat with a very clean whisk at the highest mixer setting.

When whites form a foam, add vanilla and mix.

When foam begins to thicken, start adding sugar 1 T at a time.

Between each tablespoon, mix until the sugar is completely gone.

The foam will thicken, turn white, and expand.

Beat until the foam holds its shape when you stop the mixer and pull out the beater.

Scoop out the foam and form a circle on the paper.

I piped a bit of foam around the edge to form a rim

Bake for 1 1/2 hours. Then turn off oven and open oven door.

Remove the meringue after it has cooled, such as an hour later.

Transfer fully cooled meringue to serving plate.

Just before serving, fill with sliced strawberries, sprinkle with sugar and garnish as you choose.

This dish is very pretty but we found it too sweet.

Noah ate the chicken to the bones. 

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Processing and eating an "extra" rooster

Warning - this story contains serious subject matter and describes the steps involved in slaughtering and dressing a formerly living animal. On the other hand this goes on whether you read about it or not, so you might as well.

One morning about six months ago, I watched a very quiet and personal scene in the chicken barn. One of the hens was ready to lay an egg. The rest of the flock was ranging around the yard, finding bugs and worms. Cosmo, our little rooster, was nearby, but Rose wanted to be with her sister Poppy. The two hens clucked and muttered back and forth with each other for a few moments, then Rose hopped up into the box and Poppy stood watch below, with Cosmo nearby. When Rose showed signs of being ready for the egg Poppy began to make little keening noises at the same time Rose did. Soon Cosmo joined in. It seemed to cheer Rose on, and in a few minutes, the egg came out.

Our hens don't spend much time with their eggs. Rose quickly hopped down, shook herself off, and the trio ran out to join the flock.

The same day  I found myself behind a massive truck full of caged chickens. The cages were covered incompletely with heavy tarp, which whipped around in the wind. A vortex of white feathers swirled in the truck's wake. The hens huddled miserably in their wire pens. I didn't count how many rows of cages there were, but I could have and then calculated exactly how many hens were being transported. Maybe they were going to a nice place where they could run around. I doubted it then and I still do.

My darling rooster Cosmo

Until this last year I've been vegetarian but I do eat eggs. I can't do that without knowing, either consciously or down inside that something happens to the brothers of all the hens who lay eggs for me.

Whether the hens are experiencing reasonably natural behavior, or in big factory farms in tiny cages, only the hens get to be part of the equation.

From watching my own rooster Cosmo, I knew what brave, admirable and passionate animals these birds can be. They do fight, and they crow. And of course they don't pay the bills by laying eggs.

There is never enough room for them all. Add another rooster to our farm and he'd turn Cosmo into hamburger!

So for a family with chickens,  extra roosters are a real issue.

A happy life for a productive hen

I'm not even going to go into the big AG side of things right now. That's a whole other story. For an urban farmer, you are giving one set of animals a very idyllic existence, but does your responsibility end there?

Some of us buy all female chicks. We know the roosters go somewhere, but we don't worry about it. Others buy straight run - an unsexed mixture of male and female chicks. When it becomes clear who the roosters are, either by feather characteristics or crowing, they either eat the roos or find someone else to do the honors.

Today, I became that someone else. I've known for a while that I wanted to. It seems better for the roos to have normal lives, but short ones, than to be destroyed at birth and go to waste or to be caged, fattened, and killed without ever experiencing normal chicken instincts.



It also seemed better for a rooster to go straight from his home to his demise than to get dragged to an auction, listen to all the unfamiliar animals, smell their stress, spend a day getting schlepped around, waiting to die. That sounded miserable.

So I took a couple of extra roosters from another farmer, and prepared them for cooking.

I will not show pictures. This was my first solo experience with what is euphemistically called "Poultry Processing" - slaughtering chickens. I didn't waste a moment taking pictures or trying to make things pretty. I was 100% focused on doing it well, making their deaths fast, and (honestly) being done before school got out. I had timed things a little too closely.

Leaving the first one in the transport box, I started in. I hung my bird by his feet, with his head in a bucket. Then I used a very sharp, very small knife to cut the big vein on each side of his windpipe. I have never been more glad that the knives of Several Gardens Farm are always sharp. The cut was neither deep, nor was the skin very tough. It was comparable to cutting through a mango.

The chickens bled a lot. I had seen this done before but was unprepared for the metallic smell, or the huge mess one of them made when I let him go too soon and he thrashed around. I tried not to wonder about how conscious they were, instead to make it fast. A friend and I talk about 'suspending empathy' in order to do a hard task well. That's what I did. I had expected to spend more time in prayer during the event. I didn't at all. Too busy. Note to self, next time pray first.

The hardest part of the day was going back for the second rooster. But I had committed myself at that point, so I did.

It was pretty clear when the birds were dead. Their feet cooled down almost as soon as they stopped bleeding. I held them in hot water to loosen the feathers, and plucked them. Physically this was harder and more miserable than killing them. It took longer, gave me more time to be sad, and was hard to do with any grace. Also there were lots of brand new pin feathers, which for some reason was very heartbreaking. But it had to be done. Unfortunately I tore the skin while plucking. I really hated plucking. I liked working alone for the rest of it but I would have liked help with this part.

Then I cut off the head and feet. After that, they started to look like something from the store. It was easier now.

I chilled one bird while cutting open the other. This part was sort of cool. All the body parts were just where they should be. I'm a biologist, and it was a dissection, what can I say?  Most of all, I had to be careful not to break the intestines (I did break them on one and had to scrub him when I was done) or the gall bladder. Taking out the inner organs was a calmer time that let me stop shaking, get my focus and say my belated prayer.

After removing the innards, I put the two chickens in a sink full of ice water to get their inner temperatures down as low as possible. Then they went into the fridge to "relax" for 24 hours. They were in rigor mortis and become less tough if they're allowed to come back out of it.

Then I had time to reflect. How did I feel?

• I didn't feel guilty. I don't tend to feel guilty once I've made my mind up to do something. I've made my peace.I didn't expect to, but you never know. Guilt can blindside sometimes. 

• I did feel really sad. I wish things didn't have to die. I wish I could ignore it if it has to happen. I think about the other chickens - will they miss these two boys? Sad felt appropriate and I didn't try to block it out.

• I also felt sort of like a criminal. I was afraid a neighbor would see me and turn me in. I found this interesting because most people eat chicken, but you never see the viscera and the blood. Eating a chicken someone else killed = normal. Killing a chicken = j'accuse!

• Oh yeah - the blood. I did not expect to feel so compulsive about cleaning everything that might have touched blood. I went into this concerned about the salmonella in the guts - a real, solid fear. But the blood was sort of a melodramatic reaction I don't usually have.

• I expected to feel gratitude for the roosters, but I would no longer choose that word. Gratitude is for a gift willingly given. When I milk Meggie, and she turns to me and licks my hair as I do it, I'm grateful to her for sharing her bounty. These roosters didn't get a choice. I don't have a word for what I felt toward them in honor of their unwilling sacrifice. But just calling it gratitude is too glib.

• Hungry. I timed it to be done before school got out, but I forgot to fold in time for getting lost on the way to picking them up. So I didn't get to eat. Anyway I didn't think I'd want to. But I did. I have a very hearty appetite.

Two days later, we ate the first of the two roosters. We had our expectations set fairly low. I could see that he was thinner and stringier than a chicken from the store. This makes sense. He spent his days actively seeking food and interacting with other birds, not resting in a cage being fattened up. His life was spent being himself, not being prepared for slaughter.

The whole roast bird was small enough that our family of three ate every bite in one sitting -  and we are moderate meat eaters. The meat was juicy and chewier than a purchased chicken. But oh my - the flavor was superb. We ate the bird roasted with salt and lime but without extra flavoring. The meat was rich, herbal, meaty, and packed with intensity. This sounds corny but the meat tasted like a concentrated essence of sunshine and fresh air. It was clean and nutty and somehow innocent.



To his great credit, Noah ate every bite of the bird and sucked the bits of extra meat off the bones. He is a fussy eater but  he never wastes meat. When his friends leave part of a drumstick, he gently reminds them that meat is special and should be treated with respect.

I think I will do this again. I expect the mechanics to get easier, and my feelings to reach some kind of steady state. Next time I raise a flock, I will certainly choose straight run and plan to eat the roosters, but I may put my feelers out for people who want their roo's dealt with in the meanwhile.

In a dream world somewhere, every animal can live a long, happy, productive natural life. In the world where we live now, this does not happen but at least we can let them fill their shorter lives with as much meaning and dignity as possible.

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Putting the duck in reproduction

Baby runner ducks

Warning: this blog post contains graphic information about the duck reproductive cycle, which is somewhat brutal. Read with caution.

Also, FYI, I don't want to mention body parts by name because I think weird searches would start coming by my blog. So I'm trying to be prudent, not prudish.

Our first two ducks were female runners, Celia and Rosalind.

They looked identical until this year when Rosalind grew a cape of white around her shoulders. 

Now we can tell them apart, but they still spend most of their time as a pair.

Rosalind

Celia

Then we added Daisy. Daisy was up for trade at a barter event. We were sure someone else would want her, but at the end of the evening she was still there. The family offered her to us in exchange for a jar of honey. They just wanted her to have a home.

Daisy in her element

Daisy, getting ready to initiate

Despite a stressful evening in a cage at a party, then in a car, Daisy fit in immediately. The next morning, Celia and Rosalind were following her around and accepting her as their leader.      


Daisy has much stronger drives than the other two hens. She is louder, eats more, and can be frankly quite randy.

She would entice the other girls into the pond, climb on top of them and have her way with them.

Everyone seemed fine with this arrangement but Daisy was clearly the initiator.

When Pikachu joined them, he was stressed. His mate had been killed by a raccoon. His owners were moving and he had to go. He didn't seem to want to mingle with the other ducks.

But Daisy promptly staked him out as her mate. Ducks pair bond in the fall and winter, then mate with their partner in the spring, so they spend a fair amount of time courting.

She followed him around, head bobbing, steering him away from the other girls. He appeared more frightened than attracted by this, but over time he relaxed, got to know all the ducks, and became part of the group.




As duck mating season begins, Daisy and Pikachu appear to be a pair, and Rosalind and Celia are another.

Daisy and Pikachu spend a fair amount of time head bobbing and mating, mostly in the water. They are both heavy ducks and water is probably the most comfortable place for them. Daisy likes to know where Pikachu is all the time.

The two girls don't head bob or mate, but they escort each other around and like to be together to lay eggs.

But I also see Pikachu following each of the other girls around in the yard, usually while Daisy is swimming or laying an egg. Then when she gets back out into the yard, Daisy will come running at them, break it up, and the whole flock will go scuttling around at top speed for a few minutes before settling down to other activities.

Two pairs of ducks, with drama

I would sometimes see Daisy and Pikachu getting together but always in the water. But today he successfully caught up with one of the other ducks on land, and I saw and was flabbergasted.

The drake has a very long, very strange male part - in some species though possibly not mallards 40cm long - and twisty. Imagine a round yellow shoe lace twisted until it starts to form kinks, suddenly bursting out of the lower part of an otherwise tidy looking duck. I did not get a picture of it but you can probably figure out how  to google such an image. I also didn't try or even think of measuring and I don't apologize and won't go back and do it!

When Pikachu and Daisy were mating I didn't know this. I had seen other birds mate. Chickens, crows, etc. often join together at Several Garden's Farm and sometimes I happen to be there. Most male birds lack an external organ and join their vent to the vent of the female during fertilization. So I was doubly unprepared for what I saw.

It was pretty hard to miss this long, trailing yellow thing slashing out of his underside, snaking around the hen duck and into her vent. In a matter of seconds, the act was done. It then took a half minute or so to go back inside of him. Meanwhile he was waddling around, dragging it on the ground. The whole process - well  - it was disturbing.

In the wild, there are more male than female ducks, as females are much more likely to be on land where they are easy targets for predators. When the males outnumber the females too much, their behavior becomes quite aggressive. Groups of males that didn't find mates will chase down and forcibly copulate with females, often injuring and occasionally drowning them. Female ducks try to stay near their mates and avoid unfamiliar males.

What Pikachu was doing with the duck seemed to be somewhere between the consensual pair mating he does with Daisy and the forced copulation of unpaired wild mallard males.

The hen duck neither tried to prevent him, nor did she do any of the joyous courtship Daisy does.

It was like this: "Oh, there's Pikachu. I wonder if he's ..." And by that time it was all over and both parties are running to the pond to wash off.





If two females ducks are a pair, they guard each other, nest, and raise eggs together. But they need to go outside the pair to get the eggs fertilized. Pikachu should be happy to do this.

It gives him more ducks raising his babies. The hen ducks seem less enthusiastic. They would probably prefer a choice of males, and they need to go through a courtship to be in any way interested.





Being pair bonded appears to be a prerequisite for a female duck to respond favorably to a male. Studies have show that a female duck can deflect the fertilization process if she is unwillingly mated by a drake. She has a long, crooked reproductive tract that can contract and prevent fertilization. So all the head bobbing courtship benefits the male by priming his mate to accept his offering.

What can we learn from the ducks about how to conduct human affairs? Um - nothing.

I don't think we can look to ducks for role models. They are animals following instinct and maximizing their odds of a successful outcome.

I sometimes hear people pointing to one aspect of an animal's behavior: "Ducks form monogamous male/female pair bonds" and acting as though this means - "people should model themselves on ducks". This is not a great idea. First, because as we see, ducks really have much more room for behaviors than that.


Second, because you can find almost any behavior in the animal kingdom, so using animal models will lead you into some contradictory behaviors. And third because unlike ducks, we have deep cultural and ethical elements superimposed on our instincts.

Well - perhaps we can learn from ducks that a lot of impulses exist. We have to comb through and decide when to embrace nature and when not to, but it's hard to say that something is not natural if ducks do it.

We need to ask people-questions:

Is someone getting hurt? Is someone being exploited? Is everyone participating freely?

So, do we model ducks in:

• opposite sex pair bond (why  not? every one's happy) 
• same sex pair bond (why not? every one's happy) 
• stepping outside the bond to mate (in this case some one's unhappy - iffy in human relations) 
• mating rampantly for a few weeks and then taking the rest of the year off (clearly not every one's thing but not my business) 
• male coercion of females (bad bad bad). 

duck print in the mud

Are ducks a great role model?

No.

Sorry, we'll have to keep thinking for ourselves.

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