The smell of money is a lot like methane, ammonia, and hydrogen sulfide.
The smell of money stinks.
No, really. Money smells like shit. Literally, like shit.
Cow shit, chicken shit, and the gasses produced by drilling for oil all smell horrid and are toxic if inhaled for too long. But methane (cow), ammonia (chicken), and hydrogen sulfide (oil drilling) are the smell of money. Big money.
You wouldn’t know it to spend any time in the middle of Nowhere, Texas (aka Cow/Chicken/Oil Country), but there is big money here. This county was recently named one of the top three oil producing counties in the world.
The. WORLD.
Unlike California, you can’t see any of the money here. People aren’t flashy and dress casually out here in the country. Many of the wealthy cattle ranchers and newly prosperous oil land/mineral rights owners still work their ranches. They wear regular blue jeans and drive pickups, sometimes old beat up pickups. There’s not one Ferrari or Porsche here. You might see a few of the new muscle cars, a couple older Mercedes, and a couple (random) Hummers driving around town. But most vehicles are Dodge Rams or Ford F150 trucks.
But you can smell the money wafting through the air from the cow ranches, the chicken houses, and the oil derricks. Since I’ve already shown y’all the cattle ranching, farming, and the oil derricks, this post is about the ammonia, err I mean, chicken houses…
If only I could impart the smell of a chicken house over the blogosphere. It’s probably good thing I can’t – you’d all leave. (No chickens were harmed in the making of this video, but I can’t say the same for my nasal passages.)
There is ONE rooster in this hen house of HUNDREDS of hens. Yup, he’s one lucky cock. But I guess that depends on your point of view.
UPDATE: Reader Terri pointed this out in the comments, and I neglected to mention it: Eggs do not require a rooster. This rooster got in the hen house by accident. When sexing (checking and then sorting based on their gender) the chicks, the rooster somehow got into the “hen” pile. Apparently this isn’t an uncommon occurrence. The roosters are left with then hens since trying to remove them would upset the whole bunch. The chickens are rather skittish by nature and my friend warned me not to make any sudden moves while inside. He said there’s nothing worse than the whole flock squawking and taking flight – and the dust is horrible.
The smell of those chicken houses is seared into my memory from trips to visit my grandparents traveling in our van without A/C.
And yes, a hen CAN produce an egg without a rooster. If just could never become a chick. I once had someone refuse to buy my farm eggs because I had a rooster and she considered eating fertile eggs akin to killing a baby. Whatever! A rooster does more than fertilize, he protects his hens from predators.
I have to wonder if the rooster is really happy or thinks his life is awful.
LOL! That “potential” customer must have a lot of trouble navigating the world.
This rooster got in by accident. He must have looked like a hen when they were sexing them, or someone put him in the wrong bin.
They’re following you like you’re the Queen of the Hens. And the one in front, without a foot, is probably hoping you’ll perform some kind of chicken miracle. Or maybe that’s a pegleg Pirate Chicken, coming to challenge you for dominance.
Sorry, I’m not well.
I can only imagine I looked like a giant white egg to them, a chicken god. They must think the egg came first.
There’s one without a foot?? I have to go watch the video again.