It happened every February. The rural mailman drove into our driveway to deliver Mama's annual order of Doodles from the hatchery in Knoxville. The order was always 100 week-old baby chicks, 50 males, 50 females. The only thing that changed was the breed of the chicken; sometimes it was white leghorns, sometimes Plymouth Rocks or Rhode Island Reds. This new 'crop ' of chicks would become both our laying hens and our food supply for the next year.
After opening the box in the kitchen near the stove Mama and I sorted the baby chicks into two categories, well and not well. The well ones were sent to the heated brooder in the chicken lot near our out house; the sick ones became my charges, either to nurse them back to health or to find a burial spot. This was my first experience to ever care for another living thing.
For three months we watched these doodles transform themselves into three or four pound chickens. They grew beautiful wing feathers, larger webbed feet, and larger vocal cords for bigger sounds than 'peeps'. While it was exciting to experience the weekly changes, always looming in the background was butchering day, sometime in June, where every male would be sacrificed except the one that Mama had chosen to keep around, "to keep the hens happy." The females would be spared because they were to become our egg supply.
While I was expected to help with the butchering each year, I always hated the process. It never seemed right or fair, yet I was told it was necessary for our family to have food. The slaughtered chickens were put in our Philco freezer for eating later. Nobody talked about having a chicken as a pet or eating vegetarian.
Farm life has many hard lessons about birthing, growing and dying. It also has many lessons about caring, nurturing, and surviving. While I eventually came to accept each of these lessons, I think I'll always wish that all 100 of the doodles that arrived each February could have survived. Couldn't Mother Nature find another way to make this food change business work out another way?
