Death comes two ways here on the farm. By schedule or by surprise. The pigs are on a schedule. When my time comes, I hope to be a surprise.
We had a fire last summer in our brooder shed. 200 hundred baby chicks were inside. Heat was building up so I opened the door to vent it. The flames whooshed out and then behind me I heard a cheep. The force of the blast must have blown him out. I could hear others that must have fallen through the floor as it collapsed. I gathered up the singed little balls of fluff and put them in a box in the sun room. That night I could hear faint chirps as they fought to stay alive. By morning there was only one left. After all he had been through, I couldn’t see him sent off to slaughter. So I planned a life of ease for him. We paired him up with a runt from an older batch of chicks. We called him Lucky. The other was called Lost. (On account of the fact that it somehow escaped from the box and was lost for a couple of days.)
We build a separate hut for them next to the house. They got big. And fat. As time went on we discovered Lucky was a male. His early attempts at crowing were dismal. He kept at it. He’d let loose at all hours of the day. And night. When I’d take the dogs out for their last time at 11PM, I’d hear a sound that sounded like someone was trying to strangle Julia Child. He has gotten better and sounds more like a rooster now. unfortunately, Lost passed away a couple of nights ago. We found her in the classic heart attack position. Body arched and legs stretched. It was unplanned but not unexpected. She’d been looking run down. Her comb was starting to turn a purply color and she rarely moved away from the feeder. She weighed 22 pounds. That’s huge for a chicken. Lucky has been quite lately. The guinea fowl are in and out of the hut all the time. He rarely stops to chat. He is much more active than Lost. The weather is cold. We had put bales of hay as a nesting area and windbreak. At night when it came time to lock them in, I’d see their white forms huddled together in their nest. He has only his own warmth to shield him now. I often wonder if I did him a favor.
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