What happened to our cockerels
Four of our cockerels hatched this year went to their one new home almost a fortnight ago, and you can now read all about the day @mumsmuddyveg and her husband came to visit us to collect the boys, and what’s been happening with them since, by clicking here to be taken to her blog. The boys are all different breeds but having been raised together with a lot of love and kindness bestowed upon them are almost certain to be tolerant of and friendly with each other into adulthood.
The boys will get at least as much love from their new keeper as they did here with us, and are undoubtedly very lucky birds, twice-over.
Our hens sang to the visitors and gathered round to nosey. It was an emotional day, made a little more difficult because one of the four who had attached himself to me from his hatching day—Mr Dorking, the gentle giant (he is gentle, and will be a giant)–did not want to go, and made that very clear. He’s settled into his new home now, though, as have his three ‘brothers’ and we still have Mulder here, who remains small and strange and remarkable, and we are hoping we can keep him if we can manage his crowing by bringing him indoors at night, letting him out at a reasonable hour every morning to avoid waking neighbours up at the crack of dawn.
We are prepared for and may still get complaints made (such are usually behind urban poultry-keepers’ backs, without talking to them first) but hopefully they will be seen (if they happen) by the local authority as without sufficient foundation given the measures we’ve adopted. We know from which directions complaints would come, if they come. Let’s just say the people we have in mind are considerably more anti-social than a cockerel’s crow.
To put it into perspective, though, if you can prevent cockerels from waking people up, then cock-a-doodling just two, three, or even four times a day at ‘reasonable’ times is far less pressing on the ears than car alarms, banging techno, incessantly barking dogs, and screaming kids. We have all four of those to deal with around here but, for some reason, a cockerel’s crow to many townies is unfairly targeted because, one assumes, most poultry-keepers are easy to bully into submission by waving paperwork at them.
I, however, am not easy to bully, and would go all the way in fighting to keep Mulder given his special unique nature. I mean, come on, it’s not like we’re selfish—I go to a lot of trouble, which is obviously never noticed by neighbours, why would it be, to make sure that there’s never even so much as a bad smell coming from our chicken run to offend their nostrils. They get free eggs from time to time. I’d certainly make every effort to raise the profile of our local authority if it caused us aggravation, through my journalistic connections, in a way that would be, to the bureaucrats, most unwelcome.
It’s ridiculous, though. We live in the Dales. We hear sheep and cows all the time making noise up in the hills behind our house. We have allotments close by, on which a multitude of cockerels are kept. At dusk there’s an absolute cacophony. I love it.
In the photo I’m saying goodbye to Mr Dorking. I was not happy in that moment for myself, not one bit, but I was very happy for him and for @mumsmuddyveg because I had no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the boys would go on to be a credit to me for raising them well, and a real source of ongoing joy for our new friends.
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