Down a Country Lane. Gary Blinco
it would ward off all known diseases to fowls, or so he said.
Thus prepared for the arrival of the chicks he surprised us by going to the next stage, by thoroughly renovating and enlarging the fowl run that stood about fifty yards from the house. By the time he was finished it looked a bit like a larger version of the brooder. Dad said that some of the chicks would be females and would thus become designated as ‘layers’. And as a result they would enjoy a long and fruitful life. Those unfortunate enough to be born male would be fattened and sold for the table, their lives short but cruelly focussed.
My mother persuaded him to complete the second stage by somehow securing the building material from one of the neighbours in return for some of her prized vegetables. I think she knew that he may lose interest in the project before its completion and she did not want a hundred fully grown fowls running wild and attacking the revenue producing crops in the garden.
Dad prepared to go the six miles to the railway siding to collect the chicks and my excitement reached fever pitch. There were many tears, mostly mine, when only Darryl was allowed to smugly board the truck to go on this exciting journey. ‘Don’t blubber you lot’, Dad soothed. ‘I gotta leave some room in the truck for the chicks, we won’t be long, then you can all have a nurse of a chick.’ This prospect appeased us for the time being.
Dad lit the heating lamp, placed food in the feeder troughs, and fresh well ‘hypoled’ water in the water containers before they set off. The unlucky younger set sat back for the almost unbearable wait for their return. It seemed like hours later, but was probably about two, when we heard the old truck grinding up the lane and across the gully. We ran outside and saw the feeble headlamps creeping towards the house, it was by now quite dark and our patience was almost exhausted. Mum held us at bay, as Dad and Darryl unloaded the cheeping boxes of chicks. Dad looked glum. ‘Poor little buggers must have arrived yesty’, he growled. ‘Some of ‘em have died in the cold.’
Yandilla was an unmanned siding and there were no telephones, at least not in our house, so the railways could not advise us of the arrival of our consignment of chicks. Mum simply sighed in that resigned way she had as we released the chicks from the boxes into the brooder. I think about twenty of the hundred were dead, or near it. I was more interested in the fluffy little yellow creatures that remained alive. Free of the boxes at last, they cheeped softly as they enjoyed the open area of the brooder. They fell on the food and water with relish, half starved from their long wait at the siding. We all wanted to hold a chick or two, but soon gave up on the idea when Mum started cuffing ears. ‘Don’t handle the poor little buggers, there have been enough casualties already’, she declared.
That night the constant cheeping of the chicks and the musty smell of them on the verandah made if difficult for me to sleep, and my initial excitement receded. Within a few weeks those chicks who had survived the cold, the kids and the cats, were repatriated to the ‘big pen’, to continue their growth. About sixty of the original hundred made it to adolescence, and about half of these were female. Many of these survivors began to appear in the domestic cooking pot before maturity because we were once again in a ‘bad patch’, as my mother called it. We usually were, more or less. By now Dad had lost interest in poultry farming for fun and profit and Mum took over and nurtured the fowls into a productive period. We soon had a good supply of eggs and a plump young rooster for the table when we needed one.
We were now ready to market some of our birds and Mum sent Dad out into the lanes with a message to anyone who was interested that she could now supply dressed roosters as well as fresh vegetables. The word spread and we had a steady stream of happy customers visiting the farm. One day in the middle of a hot fly-stung summer a new Ford Customline purred timidly up the dirt drive and drew up in front of the shed. A well-dressed man got out of the car and Mum greeted him at the front gate under the little trellis. ‘Hello’, she said. ‘Are you after some vegies or some dressed roosters?’
The man looked askance at the grubby kids, as he appeared to take in the run down old house and the derelict farm. ‘Well, I heard you had some fresh roosters’, he said rather haughtily, with the emphasis on the ‘fresh’ I thought. ‘Tell me’, he continued. ‘Where do you butcher the roosters? Do you have some kind of refrigeration?’ Mum shook her head and coloured brightly at the questions; I felt a stab of anger and glowered at this impertinent man. ‘We don’t have a fridge’, Mum said slowly. ‘But we only kill in the cool of the day.’
The stranger sniffed. ‘I see’, he said warily. ‘And do you have any roosters prepared at this moment?’ He watched Mum closely, waiting for her reply.
‘Why yes, I happen to have a few ready’, she said, falling into his trap. ‘How many do you want?’ She forced a wane smile.
‘It’s the middle of the afternoon on a blasted hot day Madam’, the stranger growled. ‘How could the birds possibly be fresh?’ He sighed deeply as Mum was lost for a reply. ‘Ah well’, he hissed. ‘I can’t waste a trip. Please catch me five of your fattest live birds, I’ll have the cook butcher them properly. Unfortunately I have no other choice; my banker is joining us for dinner tonight.’ Mum reddened again but dispatched Darryl and I to catch the roosters. We were both fuming as we looked for the skinniest birds we could find. ‘I don’t like that bastard’, Darryl growled through the haze of flies about his head, his eyes hard in his grimy face.
‘Me neither’, I agreed. ‘Let’s get the skinny ones, you know the ones that were crook.’ He grinned. ‘Bloody oath, I hope they make him crook as a dog and his banker with him’. We crammed five roosters in a cardboard box with a few holes punched in the sides so they could breathe, we did not want him to look too closely at our selection. I was pleased to see that Mum had sold the stranger a good selection of vegetables when we returned with the birds. He paid for the produce without question, and I grinned when I saw that Mum had inflated her prices considerably.
As the big car eased out the gate Mum flopped on the front steps and cried a little. ‘The bastard’, she sobbed. ‘I know he’s right, but what can I do about it? We don’t have any ‘fridge and the place looks a sight.’ She looked sadly around the farmyard that suddenly seemed littered with rubbish. Darryl was still fighting mad and his anger increased when he saw how upset Mum was. ‘Up his stuck up arse’, he said hotly. ‘Let’s just sell the bloody things alive, if it’s good enough for that toffee nosed prick, it’s good enough for anybody.’
‘Yeah Mum’, I joined in, sitting close to her and embracing her shoulders. ‘Then we won’t have to clean the buggers unless somebody asks us to. And while Darryl and me catch the roosters you can flog ‘em some vegies, it worked with that mongrel.’ Mum hugged us both. ‘What would I do without you pair’, she said, kissing our cheeks. ‘And you’re right, I got a good price for that lot, look.’
She spread the coins and notes out on the top step. ‘And we’ll have the ones you killed yesterday for supper tonight. Like you said Darryl - up his arse.’ Cheerful again she went inside the house as we set to work on our regular chores. There was plenty of good nourishment available for the fowls, as long as the garden produced a crop. They thrived on the waste vegetables that we fed them and we also had a good supply of grain, illicitly obtained from Dad’s bag sewing work.
Dad’s animal husbandry projects never seemed to become much of a commercial success, due either to a lack of funding, perseverance or capital, and usually a combination of all these things. But they always left a worthwhile residue to the family. At the least we benefited from the additions to our diet.
We had sold most of the roosters and I wondered if Dad would order another lot of chicks, but he appeared to have lost interest. I was disappointed as I fed the few remaining birds, there were barely enough left to supply our own needs for eggs and table fowls. I thought of trying to breed some chicks, I knew you only needed a rooster and a hen but that was the extent of my expertise. I was too ignorant to know exactly how to approach the project, and too embarrassed to ask Mum or Dad.
Darryl joined me at the chook house with an armful of freshly cut thistles.