Caitie’s chickens have hatched quite an enterprise. Last year, she and McQuaid installed a livestreaming “chicken cam” in the pen. The camera feeds images to Caitie’s website—called Texas Chix—so viewers around the world can see what the “Chix” are up to at any given moment. The website features an “About the Chix” page, with photographs of each of the chickens; an “About Caitie” page (no photo, for security reasons); and her blog, Chicken Scratches, where she posts almost every week. Caitie loves answering emails from “friends and followers” who pester her with questions about raising chickens. The whole thing has become a valuable learning experience.
Extra Crispy is currently Caitie’s only rooster. He is Mr. Personality Plus, a rather spectacular Cubalaya, which is a Cuban breed that dates back to the 1930s. A majestic fowl with a lipstick-red comb and a bright yellow beak, he sports a gleaming orange-red feathery drape over his back and wings and an elegant black tail so long that it sweeps the grass. Caitie hand-raised this gorgeous guy from a scrawny little chick and he’s tame enough to ride around on her shoulder. A plus: Cubalaya roosters have no spurs, which means that Extra Crispy is less likely to rip the skin off our arms when we give him a bath, which he hates.
Chickens are dirty birds by nature. Caitie’s flock’s favorite spa is a bowl-like depression in the corner of their run, filled with dry dirt and wood ashes. On a hot afternoon, they can all be found there, blissfully tossing dust, fluffing feathers, rolling over, and playing dead. There’s nothing more comical than a chicken indulging in a dust bath.
But chickens that are candidates for a blue ribbon need a real bath, which means water. Warm water. With soap. In good weather, Caitie and I do this outdoors, because some chickens resent the process. Winchester (our basset) usually offers to referee but I tell him this is not a game. He has to stay indoors.
Caitie filled a couple of large plastic totes with warm water (one for washing, the other for rinsing) and started with Dixie Chick, a plump, matronly Buff Orpington hen the color of an antique gold watch. Bathing is obviously on Dixie’s bucket list. She loves her bath so much that she falls asleep the minute Caitie starts applying the soap to her feathers and doesn’t wake up until she is fully washed and rinsed. Then, while I hold her, Caitie does her pedicure (chickens have really dirty feet), trims her bill, and rubs her comb and wattles with olive oil to make them glisten. To hasten the drying process, I lay a couple of towels on the grass and Caitie bundles her up like a chicken burrito, head sticking out of one end of the terry towel rollup, feet out of the other.
When Dixie Chick is drowsing in her burrito-wrap, it’s Extra Crispy’s turn. This guy doesn’t take to bathing with Dixie’s equanimity, and he expressed his feelings with indignant squawks and an irate flapping of wings. By the time we were finished, Caitie and I were nearly as wet as the rooster. But it wasn’t long before both chickens were clean and popped into the clean cages that we set up on the picnic table so their feathers could dry quickly. To speed this along, Caitie went upstairs and got my hair dryer.
Today’s baths are not quite the end of the process, however. On Thursday morning, Caitie will wash their chicken feet again and rub them with olive oil, check for poopee on their rear ends, and smooth Extra Crispy’s tail with a silk cloth to make it shiny. (Don’t ask me: all I know is that it works.) Then McQuaid will take her and her chickens to the fairgrounds for the big event. That’s the plan, anyway. Like most plans around our house, it’s subject to change.
While Caitie emptied the plastic totes and put things away, I went upstairs and changed into dry shorts and a T-shirt. When I came back down to the kitchen and looked at the clock, I saw that McQuaid would be home in fifteen minutes. Brian and Casey, his girlfriend, would be along shortly after. It was time to feed Winchester and Mr. P and start putting supper on the table.
Winchester is our new basset boy, a replacement for the late, lamented Howard Cosell—although no dog could replace Howard in our hearts. Winnie (whom we found at Basset Rescue in Austin) is only three years old. But he’s already seen enough of life to be profoundly pessimistic about the future of our planet and all its resident species, and he frequently offers his opinion on the subject in melancholy bass-and-tenor basset bays. Winchester’s personal issues are mostly territorial. He has staked a nighttime claim to the entire foot of our bed, insists on anytime access to McQuaid’s leather recliner, and will lunge through the locked screen door whenever a squirrel or crow trespasses in his personal backyard. Another issue still under negotiation: the house rule that bassets are not permitted to have bagels or pizza. When Winchester stands on his hind legs, he is as tall as he is long—which is just tall enough to reach a slice of pizza left carelessly at the edge of the kitchen counter. His own personal rule: if you
