The Poultry Princess: Chicken Sex Isn’t A Spectator Sport

For the last while I’ve given over Saturday’s spot to guest contributors who present the humorous side of having chickens. This is the 11^th episode of The Poultry Princess series, observations of the ups and downs of keeping poultry by Heide Royer.

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The most infamous madam in the country shares the same name as I do, Heidi as in Heidi Fleiss, although I spell my name differently. I’ve always gone by my middle name, since Mari-Lena typically got slaughtered in some way by non-Spanish speaking people. I was teased growing up because I went by Heide, and of course with her constantly in the news at the time, it was always fresh on some kid’s lips.

I never knew that one day, I would have a revelation that I indeed run a brothel.

Travis, my boyfriend, is new to the chicken world and every day is a learning experience for him. I have one particular partridge Silkie that seems to be everyone’s favorite go-to-hen but she only has eyes for my Rhode Island Red rooster Scar, formerly known as Scarlett, who stays in my backyard. I find it odd how the roosters single her out every morning even though there are dozens of other hens to choose from. She’s my only Silkie girl. She’s small and dainty and apparently has a cloaca of gold.

Every morning when I let the birds out, she goes about 50 yards from her coop, and walks over to the fence so she can stare at Scar on the other side. It takes her about half an hour to get there since she has about eight roosters jumping on her. She does the standard chicken shuffle after the morning assault and keeps pushing on until she gets there. It would be easy for either one of them to fly over and actually be beak to beak, but instead they strut up and down the fence line. She clucks softly, coos, and pecks through the openings, and he does the rico suave wing dance and flaps his full, crimson wings.

I thought it would be fun to finally put them together, the forbidden flame of love extinguished, their story to be chicken scratched into the earth for two lifetimes over. I picked her up and started walking around to the gate. I could see Scar start to run in my direction like a gold medal inspired Usain Bolt for the finish line. I called for Travis to come watch this event, knowing that this was truly a once in a lifetime occurrence. A beautiful vision that would bond us as a couple. Love, cherish and make fond memories.

The moment I put my Silkie down onto the grass, Scar utterly destroyed her. What occurred was not the scene I had pictured in my mind from ‘When Harry Met Sally’, it was more like ‘Hostel’, ‘Saw’, and ‘This is Us’ all wrapped up in a seven second, chaotic, wings-a-going, chicken squawking, feathers flying, fright fest.

I turned around to look at Travis, horror filling in every line and wrinkle on my face like rivers of shame. His face was contorted in a manner that for a second I thought he had left his body and just told Jesus to take the wheel for what he just witnessed.

This was not going to bond us as a couple after all. Baking dark chocolate chip cow patties would have gone over easier than having him watch the violent manner in which chickens copulate. I know better, but for some reason I thought this would be different since they ‘courted’ for such a long time.

I immediately took the cigarettes out of their beaks and separated them back into their respective areas. Scar passed me a $50 bill and we called it a day.

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Thanks to Heide for once again sharing the stories from her flock, used with permission.