The Honest Courtesan

If you’ve never had another living creature under your care, you may never have considered how much time and effort is spent dealing with their poop.  Babies need to be changed several times a day, and if you’re in a city dogs need to be walked (out in the country they just let us know when they want to go outside); cat boxes need to be cleaned about twice a week, and henhouses need to be “mucked out” twice a year.  That means using a shovel to remove all the “poultry litter”, which is merely a concise term for the revolting mixture of decaying hay or shavings, molted feathers, spilled food, and fecal matter which builds up on the floor over time.  I generally do it in March before I get the nursery ready, then again in September or early October as it begins to turn cold.  But when I did it last autumn it really wore me out (like any shovel work, it’s rather strenuous), so a couple of weeks ago I decided to start filling just one bucket every day (when I go in to check feed & water and collect eggs) and dumping it on the compost heap; that way the work is spread out so as to be less exhausting and less odious.  While the chicks are still in the brooder, their poops are generally so tiny it’s no big deal to clean the shavings every week for the three weeks they’re inside; once in a while a chick gets a turd stuck to her butt-feathers, but it’s typically easily removed with fingernails (if you’re a parent you’ve touched worse, and there is such a thing as “soap” when the task is done).  But this time one of the chicks arrived with a hardened mass of feces; I’m told this is called “pasty butt” and it can actually kill them if not removed, because their vent gets clogged.  And it’s not easy to remove; it’s so hard and baby chicks are so fragile that one can’t simply pull it off, which means filling a basin with warm water and dipping her butt into it to soften the mess before removal.  Once I was done I got to see and hear something one doesn’t encounter every day: a chick fart, as she squatted and emptied her chute with an audible “poot”.  It has been a week since then and she seems fine now, so I think we’re past the danger. And I’m sure y’all enjoyed this fascinating discussion of literal chickenshit, so it’s a win all around.