The Legend of the Other Jimi Hendrix
If you’re reading this Blog for helpful tips, or any kind of useful information, then I would skip over this post; This post is for purely entertainment purposes.
This is the legend of the other Jimi Hendrix.
In March 2019, the world shut down as my least-favorite Corona took over. Some people took to baking bread and others fought for their lives from hospital beds. Dave and I were fortunate enough to have found time and plenty of space to start out homesteading dream, so we set out to purchase our first flock of backyard chickens — knowing absolutely nothing about what they needed or how to care for them.
We went to Tractor Supply and bought a mixed flock of 6. We bought two Buff Orpingtons (named Hennessey and Nugget … spoiler alert, they were both Roosters), two Black Laced Silver Wyandottes (Henrietta and Beethoven), one Leghorn (Lil’ Peep), and one Australorp, known affectionately to us as the other Jimi Hendrix. We didn’t know to ask for only Pullets, AKA young hens, which is how we ended up with two roosters — our first rookie mistake of many. Our funky flock had character, and they lived in our guest room for the first couple weeks while we scrambled to make a chicken coop and run for them out of reclaimed wood pallets (a story for another time).
The first night with our chicks, we sat and stared at them with a creepy smile for hours on end. While we watched our new chicks, we noticed one of them was super lethargic and wasn’t eating or drinking like the rest of the chicks. This was Jimi Hendrix, and this would not be her last brush with death, and she was the baddest bitch I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. Dave had tapped the knowledge of fellow flock-owners to see what to do and received an entire sliding-scale of advice: some said to let nature take its course and others suggested home remedies to try and perk her up. Clearly, we weren’t going to sit back and do nothing, so we hurried to make an apple-cider vinegar/starter feed/water mixture to feed to her through a dropper. She had a droopy head and had difficulty keeping her eyes open, but we kept at it and stayed with her for hours, nursing her back to health. Within a day, she was pecking and scratching with the rest of them.
Over the next three years, Jimi would go on to be a healthy chicken with a kind heart and a broody personality. She personally hatched two generations of hybrid birds, and she was a consistent layer with beautiful brown, speckled eggs. About six months ago, we noticed Jimi was slowing down. She would be the last to come out of the coop, the last to come out of the run, and she tired easily. We chalked it up to old age, and let her live her slow-ass truth.
We try and let the chickens free-range any time we’re home because it’s better for them, better for our lawn, and helps keep the bugs at bay. This past Spring, the chickens were free-ranging, and it was dusk, so most of the flock had returned to the run — including our TWO roosters: The Great Henethian (Hennessey) and Sir Earle Gray of Kent. Hennessey has always been a docile rooster and a strong protector of the flock against predators, and Sir was docile too … until he wasn’t. He had recently gotten quite aggressive with mounting the hens, ripping their feathers out, and giving off strong non-consensual vibes. We counted the flock in the run, and we were missing one: the other Jimi Hendrix.
We began looking everywhere for her as the sun was setting and the early Spring air turned crisp. We looked in all the usual spots: under the woodsheds, in the Alpaca hay, behind the garage, and she was nowhere to be found. Every minute that passed, my heart sank a little more, and my eyes began to sting because we loved that lil’ stinker. I called to Dave, “I think she’s gone,” and he started to head back to the house with me — dejected and disappointed.
Just as the sun winked below the horizon, we saw the dark, limping outline of an animal struggling to pull itself up on the hill; it was Jimi. She had heard us calling, shaking Millet, and ringing the bell to tell her to come home for bed. She was clearly hurt — possibly mortally wounded, and we raced to her to assess the damage.
We scooped the other Jimi Hendrix up into our arms and brought her over to the outdoor slop sink. She had dried blood over her feathers, and her waddle and comb were graying (a sign that they’re struggling). She was weak and slow. We were worried, and I was weepy. We put her under the warm water and saw that she had a half-inch wide gash stretching from her breast down to her stomach. We still don’t know for certain what caused it to this day. It could have been an Eagle or a Hawk trying to score some dinner, or what’s more likely, it could have been Sir aggressively mounting her and The Great Hennessey defending her and attacking Sir in her honor. Either way, one of those gnarly talons on either of the Roos could have caused that damage easily.
I have faced my fair-share of criticism when it comes to our refusal to execute our hens and Roos. We don’t raise our chickens for meat, but we do consume and use their eggs. I don’t like death (who does!?!), and I don’t have the stomach or heart to kill any one of our animals — even if it’s out of mercy. Our chickens are our pets. It’s bad form to kill and eat your pets. So in that instant, we had to decide what to do with Jimi. We knew she might not make it through the night, so we figured we would make her as comfortable as possible and bring her inside to live out her final days, or hours, with us — people who loved her.
We gave her a bath with warm water, which she loved, and dried her with a blow dryer. We put some antibacterial ointment on her gash, put together a carrier cage with bedding, food, and water, and crossed our fingers. We couldn’t put her back with the other chickens because chickens peck at red and could possibly attack her because of her wounds (probably one of chickens’ shittier qualities).
Over the next couple of days, Jimi started to heal. Chickens actually heal from the inside out, so wounds will sometimes look worse before they look better, but she was perking up and rebounding to our astonishment and amazement, so we were feeling good and high-fiving. But now we had another problem: Dave’s birthday.
All of our animals are fine to be left alone for about 24 hours as long as they have food and water, so Dave and I had planned to go up to The Berkshires for his birthday. I had booked a motel, and we were gonna hit all our favorite spots and do some snowboarding. Jimi Hendrix, however, posed a problem to our plans. Who would take care of her? She needed her bandages changed a couple times a day, along with her food and water. There was only one logical thing to do: The other Jimi Hendrix, having fought off death twice in her life, was going to The Berkshires. We packed up her little suit case, put on her fanciest hat, and put her in the car to take with us for Dave’s Birthday celebration. I’m pretty sure she flipped off the rest of the flock as we pulled out of the driveway.
When we arrived at the motel, I was too embarrassed to ask the concierge what their “Hen policy” was, so I opted for smuggling her inside under a motel towel. Nothing to see here. Nothing to see. Jimi, Dave, and I partied like it was 1998, and Jimi lived up to her name. For most of the visit, she stayed in the motel bathroom, watched pay-per-view movies, and ate as much millet as she wanted. Hanging out with our injured chicken, Jimi Hendrix, in a motel in The Berkshires is one of my fondest memories and still makes me laugh every time I think of it.
When we got back, we spent another two weeks nursing Jimi back to health and starting the tiresome task of integrating her back into the flock without having the rest of the flock beat the shit out of her. It was a slow process, but it worked! Jimi was living back with her flock, and while she was still slow and tired and old, she was living and breathing and eating.
I returned home from work one day in May, and it was hot … like unseasonably hot. I went to check on the chickens and noticed Jimi wasn’t out in the run with the rest of them which was actually kind of normal for her. She tended to tire easily and went back in the coop for most of the day now. Her comb and waddle were growing more muted by the day, and we knew she didn’t have much more in her. I opened the coop to check on her, and I knew something way wrong. She was laying on her side, half in and half out of one of the nesting boxes. I picked her up, and she didn’t fight. She was so heavy, heavier than normal. Her eyes were tired, and she looked old and ready to go. I called Dave and told him that Jimi was dying. He was already on his way home and hoped he would get home in time to say goodbye. I hung up and pet her as she gasped for her final breaths. I thanked her for fighting and raising our chicks. I told her how much I loved her, and I cried as I felt her body jerk and twitch with its final reflexes.
The other Jimi Hendrix didn’t have as many talents as the original, but she faced death twice and lived to tell the tale. She had iridescent feathers that changed colors in the sunshine, and she always came home when the bell called her — even when it hurt, and even when she didn’t think she’d make it.
We buried her in a garden of perennials. We think of her often, and in this household, we mourn the loss of two legends named Jimi Hendrix.
