Chelsea Boes: Eliza the rooster and the suburban phenomenon of chicken-mania

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an adventurous soul in possession of a sizable backyard must also be in want of chickens.

I’m talking about chicken-mania. You can read about the phenomenon in Susan Orlean’s fascinating book "On Animals." Here’s the gist: Henhouses were once ubiquitous in America. Then came HOAs and suburbs, when people demanded the farm stay decidedly away from the home. But the pendulum of history swung again. People decried factory farms. They missed knowing where their food came from. Now millions of Americans are raising their own chickens again.

My own longing for hens started with another book, "Chick Days" by Jenna Woginrich, which I found on a library shelf almost a decade ago and read from cover to cover. This spring I moved to Old Fort. Finally, I owned a chicken-friendly backyard.

My family stormed the Black Mountain Tractor Supply with an airtight plan: We’d raise four hens, which together would produce approximately one dozen eggs per week. No roosters.

Why no roosters? "Chick Days" says you don’t need them. Some farmers differ on this point. My own farmer grandfather used to say “A rooster makes happy hens.” My mother, however, sides with Woginrich: Who needs a rooster?

Before the Tractor Supply trip, I bought "Chick Days" for my bird-loving daughter. Children remember everything. They’re like external hard drives. Near-perfect historians. If you can get them to read books about practical subjects they really like and then train them to act on their knowledge in a responsible way, you’ve doubled the investment you put in during the nine grueling months of pregnancy.

As chicks, the birds endeared us; as adults, they bestow on us morning eggs and also a reason to look out the window. They cluck around the backyard eating bugs and creating the peculiar peace possible only with poultry.

They do also cause me some embarrassment. When their wings grew big enough, for example, they flitted over the neighbors’ fence. I ran down the driveway after them in my pajamas, hoe in hand.

Anyway — misadventures are to be expected in amateur farming, right? And so, apparently, are roosters named Eliza.

Our fluffy spring chicks allegedly came sexed. I don't understand exactly how experts tell a baby hen from a rooster, but I do know that mistakes are made. We got one of these fluffy little mistakes. Such a cute little mistake. My oldest daughter, now a chicken expert, named her Eliza. Soon Eliza grew a pretty green tail.

In November when Eliza was nearly full-grown, we discovered that hens never have green tail feathers. “Mommy,” my kid grieved, “I want you to turn Eliza back into a hen!”

“Oh honey,” I answered as reality dawned, “she’s always been a rooster.”

Apparently you observe the growth of a loved being at such a gradual pace that you can’t see the obvious thing in front of you until it crows. Now our early blindness makes us laugh. Eliza was bossy right out of the eggshell. (S)he grew extra-large and also sprouted wattles.

Eliza is as boy as chicken gets. (S)he charges our border collie, David, when he nears the coop. We call the resulting violent ballet “The David and Eliza Show”: Eliza puffs up and advances. David yelps then tries again.

But now it isn’t so funny. This week our oldest daughter joined the show by accident while collecting eggs. She got pecked and chased.

Eliza defends the hens. And I must defend my kids. “I will eat that bird,” I growled when my daughter came in with a red peck-mark on her leg.

She looked alarmed. “Will you really?”

I grew up in the countrified part of New York state where people know roosters can get mean. They also butcher their own birds. With a brief refresh, I could probably perform the technique myself. And we would get along just fine without a rooster.

But my kid loves Eliza, the tiny chick she raised by hand. Like Fern’s in "Charlotte’s Web," her affection stands up against the hard sense of seasoned farmers. So I compromise. I let the rooster stay, but I do the egg collecting now because I’m big enough to defend myself.

We waited all summer and fall for eggs. Now Ham’N’Egger lays perfect green ones. Rosetti and Eponine Kielbasa (named by the three-year-old) lay brown. I sprinkle food on the ground like Cinderella each morning and call, “Good morning, girls!”

Eliza glares at me from golden eyes and, out of spite, lays nothing.

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Chelsea Boes lives in Old Fort and works as editor of WORLDkids Magazine in Biltmore Village. 

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Boes: The suburban phenomenon of chicken-mania