Krischan and the Moorhens

In 1933, we moved to where we still live today, essentially to the countryside. Today, it’s a pleasant residential area. Back then, it was a godforsaken place, accessible only on foot or, at best, by what was called a bicycle at the time, though often you had to push it the last kilometer. There were hardly any cars. My father had saved for three years for a motorcycle when around 1930, he read a notice at the rural train station: land for sale, one Reichsmark per square meter. He had already saved a thousand marks, a fortune back then. And the land cost nine hundred. He didn’t hesitate long. He bought the land. The motorcycle had to wait.

Then he built a small house on the land, all by himself, without any help. He even made the bricks himself, using a homemade mold, from cement and sand. He had to buy the cement, a sack every three to four weeks for a hefty 2.50 Reichsmarks. The sand was provided by the land for free. It was a rather sandy plot. And 1933 was a memorable year, not just for our small family. It was wonderful. From then on, we had our own garden. The house was very small, but it was ours. And we had a garden. And behind the garden was heathland with birches and a mysterious moor. And all around were fields, cornfields, turnip fields, cow pastures. And not far away, there was an oak forest with huge trees, with bright anemones in spring and tall, glossy green ferns in summer.

In the garden, we had everything. We grew potatoes, sowed carrots, leeks, radishes, spinach, and parsley. We planted cabbage, green, white, and red, put in onions and shallots, grew cucumbers and tomatoes. We planted fruit trees, apples, pears, cherries, and plums. Most of them were grafted by my father himself, onto wildlings he found in the hedges along the fields. The bushes, red currants, gooseberries, black, green, yellow, and red, as well as raspberries and blackberries, were gifts from neighbors and friends, or my grandfathers gave us cuttings from their bushes, which they themselves had once received from someone. We couldn’t afford to buy anything.

We also kept livestock, rabbits, and chickens. The rabbits for Sunday roast and for manure production. The chickens for eggs and occasionally for a good soup. As already indicated, we had little money, very little. It was the time of the great unemployment in the early thirties, and we had to get by on seven marks a week. But we were happy.

We usually kept a good dozen chickens. There was always a rooster too. Initially, it was the Barnevelder breed, dark brown, somewhat speckled hens with a low comb. The eggs they laid were also dark brown. The rooster was splendidly colorful with a brown-golden ruff and black, green-blue shimmering tail feathers. A rooster had to be there, as we raised our own chicken offspring. And for that, as with humans, you need a male counterpart.

The chickens had a small, warm coop, attached directly to the house and accessible to us from inside the wash kitchen through a man-high flap. The chickens, on the other hand, had an outside hatch, just right for a large hen and for the rooster, but also for foxes and martens. That’s why the chicken hatch was closed in the evening. That soon became my task when I was about five. Next to the coop was a small run. It was very small, because the actual chicken run was the adjacent heath and the nearby moor, the whole wide area behind the garden. That’s where the chickens spent the whole day. Happy chickens, one would say today.

Only for feeding, in the morning, at noon, and in the evening, when we called them, did they come home to the small run by the coop, full of hunger and eagerness, running or almost flying, and always with a lot of noise and clucking.

The Barnevelder chicken breed didn’t stay pure for long. All the neighbors, and there were soon more and more who moved into Hattsmoor, also let their chickens roam free. And the roosters, as people say, liked to stray and loved the hens of the neighbors. They mated with the hens, as they say in the jargon of chicken keepers. And if the own rooster didn’t pay attention, or if a hen, by accident or a bit on purpose – hens are only human after all – strayed too far from the flock, then it happened. Sure, the own rooster mostly kept watch. And not infrequently there were territorial fights, bitter and often bloody. But it couldn’t be prevented that the breeds mixed, as today with us humans, where the continents have been brought so close together by airplanes.

Soon our flock of chickens was a mix of Barnevelders, Rhode Islanders, Italians – these are small, very elegant chickens – and the simple country chicken, which in turn is already a pre-mixed breed of many chicken races. Thankfully and wisely, none of the settlers kept the white Leg

horn chickens. That would not have been good. Because white chickens stand out too much in the moor and heath and would have been spotted too quickly by foxes and martens.

The rooster was always the showpiece of the flock. A large, blood-red comb and equally red wattles adorned his head. Added to this were the magnificent golden glowing ruff, the curved, fringe-like, red-golden side feathers at the tail, and last but not least, the long, sickle-shaped, blue-green shimmering tail feathers themselves. That was quite something. In addition, there was the bold look and the extremely proud walk. Every rooster was a little king. And such a rooster wanted to assert himself. Some roosters defended their realm and their hens so enthusiastically that none of us humans could venture near the flock without being attacked. Any foreign rooster was attacked, of course. And daily, sometimes as early as four in the morning, the often quite imperious crowing resounded from everywhere, the call sign to mark one’s own kingdom, one’s own territory.

Once we had a rooster, Krischan we called him. That’s Low German and translates to Screech Rooster. However, the High German name Christian is also Krischan in Low German. I don’t know the connections there. Anyway, our Krischan was a particularly beautiful one. Moreover, he was a very good rooster, in every respect. He took very good care of his hens and didn’t miss any during the day. So the offspring was always secured. In addition, he was extremely amiable towards us. We had raised him ourselves, from the egg.

So far, we had always obtained the roosters from far away, to bring fresh blood into the flock. Krischan, however, came from our own coop, and he came to us quite by chance. The chickens roamed around in the moor and heath during the day, looking for additional food. Sometimes some greens, sometimes a worm, sometimes a beetle. There wasn’t much they found in the sparse soil. But they always scratched around diligently. Only for feeding and also for laying did they mostly come home to the coop, where they had a few nests, small wooden boxes lined with hay on the wall. When a hen had laid her egg, she announced it with loud clucking. And the rooster knew he had to perform his duty, courtship duty, so that tomorrow’s egg would also be fertilized. And he didn’t delay. In March or April, some hens started to brood. They stopped laying and sat on a few eggs in some nest.

We usually collected twelve eggs from the best laying hens by then and slipped them under the most caring broody hen in the nest.

Not always did the hens lay their eggs in the home coop. Sometimes they built a nest somewhere in a cozy bush and laid there. They laid away, as we called it. I had a knack for it and usually found the nests with the “laid away” eggs. But sometimes not. And if then suddenly a hen was missing, there were two possibilities. Either it was the fox, or we had to expect that the missing hen would come back in about three weeks with a brood of chicks. Krischan came from such a brood in the moor.

He was the first of the five little young roosters to start crowing, and he was the strongest. He was also very trusting. When I came home from school, he flew, yes, he flew towards me. He perched on my shoulder and let out his battle cry, initially a bit clumsy as a young rooster. Later, however, it was metallically bright and clear. Then he strutted around me companionably and accompanied me to the garden gate.

When he was grown up, he took over the rule of the chicken folk. The old rooster, actually his father, had nothing more to say. He was suppressed. Only one power struggle was necessary. Then the matter was clear. We couldn’t bear to watch how troubled and almost fearful the old rooster always crouched in the corner. He was promptly slaughtered and turned into roast and soup. His brothers also ended up in the pot, one after the other.

Now Krischan had free rein. But he was not busy enough with his ten hens. Two or three times a day, he let out his battle cry particularly imperiously and then invaded the neighboring territories. The roosters initially defended themselves bitterly. But soon he had defeated them all. And when he then strutted in, they hid in the bushes or simply took flight. He then quickly mated with a few hens and soon returned quite proudly.

We soon had trouble with our then left neighbors because of him. They were a bit difficult anyway and not easy to keep peaceful. But now it was completely over, somehow understandable. They had the chicken run far from ours in front of the house, not visible to Krischan at all. How he found out where the neighbor’s chickens were housed is a mystery to me. But he found them, and the way there. He flew onto our flat roof. From there the six meters to the neighbor’s roof. He ran along it for another ten meters, always accompanied by his imperious crowing, and at the end, he elegantly dropped into the foreign run and caused trouble there. The actually strong neighbor’s rooster was no match for his temperament. After a short resistance, he gave in and hid in the farthest corner. The hens, however, apparently didn’t find it too bad. The neighbor’s wife did. One day she caught Krischan, kept him until evening, briefly dunked him in a bucket of water, and threw him over the fence. Since it was pitch dark, Krischan sat quite dazed next to the hedge, not knowing what had happened. Chickens are night-blind. He let me catch him easily and bring him to his coop, soaking wet as he was. The next morning he was dry again and proud as ever. No one had seen his disgrace.

He didn’t learn from it. Roosters probably can’t. One day the dispute with the neighbors because of him had become so bad that we were forced to slaughter him. There was no more stormy greeting when I came home from school. And his bright, metallic battle cry no longer resounded through the heath and moor. The roosters in the area, however, breathed a sigh of relief. Only the neighbor’s hens often looked wistfully and furtively over to the chicken coop.