On June 29, 2015 a Space Ex Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral on its way for a resupply of Space Station. 2 minutes and 19 seconds into the flight it exploded spectacularly. Space Ex immediately launched an internal investigation as to the causes of the explosion. Shortly afterwards, Space Ex officials began claiming that had astronauts been on board they would have been safely jettisoned in an escape vehicle. At this same time Space Ex began showing videos of safely executed tests conducted on this jettison system at their facilities. While escape vehicles have been touted by NASA and numerous other space agencies as necessary components of a launch vehicle since the original Challenger explosion many years ago, it is by no means appropriate to think that any such vehicle can protect astronauts during an event such as happened to this Space Ex vehicle.
Escape launch vehicles require advance warning of system problems of a long enough time period so that the escape vehicle itself can be outside the deadly shock wave produced by a large explosion. In the case of this Falcon 9 explosion they had less than a second of data to warn them that there was a problem. This is not a long enough time period to activate the jettison of an escape pod and escape the shock wave. It also assumes that an anomaly such as was seen on Falcon 9, the temporary loss of Helium pressure would have initiated such a sequence. I can assure you that it would not initiate such a sequence. Less than one second of data suggesting that there is an unknown and unknowable blip in pressure would NOT be a cause to abort a mission.
Getting back to the explosion itself, Space Ex eventually concluded that the explosion was caused by a rapid overpressurization of the second stage LOX tank. The first stage of Falcon rockets use an array of Merlin engines. The second stage uses one vacuum tuned engine of the same type with a different injector and nozzle type. Once a vehicle escapes Earth's atmosphere and gravity the power requirements for propulsion drop dramatically. One engine is sufficient to propel the vehicle at this stage but it has to be an engine that is more efficient operating in the perfect vacuum of space. NASA utilizes Hydrogen/LOX engines in this atmosphere because of the increased specific impulse energy over a RP1/LOX engine. For simplicity and the elimination of different fuel storage and handling techniques Space Ex early on opted for RP1/LOX engines for both stages of their vehicles. It is a trade off between efficiency and weight, which is at the root of all such decisions concerning space vehicles.
In order to support combustion of a powerful rocket engine you must have a very fast and efficient pumping system to provide it with the massive amounts of fuel required to produce the high thrust requirements of such a vehicle. Turbopumps have long been a source of problems in this chain. Turbopumps on LOX systems are specifically very problematic because of a couple of inherent features. A turbopump runs at extremely high rates of speed with very close tolerances. As I mentioned before, LOX systems preclude the use of lubricants because of the incompatability of LOX to hydrocarbons. Therefore, you wind up with tight tolerances at extremely cold temperatures that have to self lubricate with the LOX itself. Every rocket manufacturer has struggled with this architecture. As I will explain later, it was this same type of system that was at the heart of the Antarres explosion earlier in this same year.
One of the ways of alleviating this problem is to run the initial tank pressures at high pressures to begin with. This becomes somewhat problematic in smaller tanks as it requires a finely tuned pressurization system to balance the ullage (gas pocket) that sits on top of the liquid with the rapidly depleting liquid in the tank when the engine is firing. Falcon 9 uses gaseous helium to provide the pressurization in their LOX tank on the second stage. Compressed helium is stored in several small pressure bottles inside the LOX tank itself at 5500 PSIG.
In order to give a relative idea of what this type of pressure is capable of think of the movie Jaws where in the last scene the shark is blown up by shooting a rifle into a scuba tank inside his mouth. Scuba tanks are pressurized with breathing air to a little less than 3000 PSIG. As you might imagine such high pressures require a very thick and heavy tank wall so that the vessel itself won't rupture inadvertently from this internal force. As I have mentioned already, the crucial tradeoff in space flight is always weight vs. safety. Instead of 4-1 safety factors such as a scuba tank on earth requires, space vehicles use 1.4 - 1.5 to one as a basic safety requirement. Instead of a tank that operates at 5500 PSIG being required to be designed to withstand 22000 PSIG it is designed to withstand 7700 PSIG.
Space Ex is also doing several other things with this system to increase efficiency. The first thing they are doing is super cooling the helium tank and fill gas by storing it inside the LOX tank itself. This is not a new discovery as NASA has been doing this for quite some time on many different vehicles. By putting the pressurization tank inside the LOX itself it is possible to have a smaller pressurization tank. A tank at 5500 PSIG Helium in ambient temperature will contain much less actual usable gas than a tank containing 5500 PSIG at -279 Degrees F. The Helium molecules become denser and can be more efficiently compressed so that more gas is available to pressurize the tank.
Falcon 9's system utilizes the engine itself to heat the helium and rapidly expand it before returning it to the LOX tank ullage to pressurize the LOX system. The helium is released through chambers in the engine as it burns which rapidly expands the helium before it is returned to the LOX tank to be used as a pressurization source to force the LOX out of the tank and into the engine. As you can imagine, the control system needed to tightly control the ullage at a constant pressure utilizing this chain of events is quite complicated.
Naturally, Falcon 9's LOX system is as full as possible prior to flight. A large initial ullage would require a large tank and more weight so at launch the ullage in the LOX tank is very small. This effectively means that relatively small loss of control of this pressurization system will result in large pressure fluctuations in the LOX tank during the initial use of this system. Rapid pressure rise from uncontrolled release of the Helium in these tanks has resulted in the loss of both Falcon rockets that have exploded so far. We know it did with the first Falcon explosion and all evidence points in the direction that it did on this last one as well.
Before we go any further on this concept let me get back to the other thing that Space Ex is doing with their helium pressurization system. Remember the analogy of the scuba tank for a moment. Not only is Space Ex using a 1.4-1 safety factor on the design of the tanks to be used in but they are also using some relatively new technology to build the tanks themselves. Composite Overwrap Pressure Vessels (COPV's) have been under development for some time now. We have built and tested to failure many such vessels where I work so I am not exactly unfamiliar with the concept.
A COPV can be manufactured in several different ways. Most of them utilize a lightweight inner aluminum tank that is rated at a very low pressure. It is thin walled aluminum and extremely lightweight in comparison with an equal stainless steel tank of the same size. This thin walled aluminum tank is then wrapped with carbon fiber, usually by an automated computer controlled lathe in numerous layers of thin carbon wires that are glued in place as the wrap process takes place. The resultant tank is then tested for pressure rating. Design processes and computer programs to produce these tanks are complicated to say the least.
The end result is a pressure vessel that is vastly lighter, which makes it ideal for usage on space flight vehicles. We have tested design and process on these tanks for many years in our shop. Properly done and controlled such processes produce reliable and predictable results. We have tested series of tanks to failure at Liquid Nitrogen Temperatures (-320 degrees F) and even up to Liquid Helium Temperatures (-452 Degrees F). NASA has entertained the idea of using these tanks just as Space Ex currently does in LOX tanks. They have even considered doing the same thing in Liquid Hydrogen tanks which is why we tested at even colder temperatures.
The key to the successful production of such tanks is process control. In other words, careful control of materials and manufacturing process produces consistent results in the actual pressure these tanks will withstand. Any loss of control of either of these variables produces disastrous results which is why NASA is still reluctant to commit to using COPV's inside LOX and LH2 tanks.
There are at least two other dangers associated with COPV's and their usage. Each pressure cycle effectively stretches the composite overwrap strands to a certain extent. Therefore, COPV's are listed for usage by the number of pressure cycles they see as a matter of course. Each pressure cycle is noted and logged and after a sufficient number of cycles the tank is no longer rated for use as a pressure vessel. By itself, this is not a problem for the usage of COPV's on space vehicles as they will see a relatively small number of usages anyway.
The last part of this issue is that COPV's are extremely fragile as far as handling and usage in comparison with metal tanks. Since the thin composite strands are effectively a very large chain reaction system, any external damage to a small strand effectively makes it the weakest link in a chain and we all know the adage about the weakest link in any chain being the source of its strength. Inadvertent bumping into sharp objects or dropping of objects on COPV's can cause catastrophic failures accordingly.
Thursday, October 6, 2016
Wednesday, October 5, 2016
Inherent Issues and Reasonable Response
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/house-republicans-just-launched-political-232200411.html
From the article....
3. Given the two recent failures of the Falcon 9, will the Air Force add more weight to mission assurance and schedule reliability vs. price in their future launch service procurements? If not please explain.
First off.... let me start out by saying that the investigation is still underway and no one knows for certain what happened to cause the Falcon rocket to explode on the pad during fueling operations on the pad at Cape Canaveral as of yet.
However, what we do know is that it did explode. Preliminary investigation reports indicate that it was a massive rupture of a Ghe vessel in the second stage LOX tank on the vehicle. Space Ex has been quick to point out that this is NOT the same issue that caused the spectacular mid air explosion on the first Falcon loss less than a year ago. At best, this is a partial truth. At worst, we may soon find that it has an identical cause in the very near future.
Having been personally involved in similar accident investigations in the past, I can say that the whole process of building a fault tree of possible causes and carefully and painstakingly running every possible cause to ground is a slow and painstaking process; especially when much of the evidence is no longer existing due to the inherent dangers that come with using a perfect oxidizer. LOX is Liquid Oxygen and it is the perfect oxidizer of which I am speaking.
LOX is necessary on rocket engines flying out of the earth's atmosphere for a couple of reasons, the main one being that all combustion requires oxygen to support it and once a vehicle is it out of the earth's atmosphere it cannot burn the oxygen in the surrounding atmosphere because there is none. Therefore, there must by an oxidizer on board and LOX is the most efficient oxidizer known to man. Since rocket engines are all about efficiency; ie.... weight to lift capacity on very narrow margins of failure.... LOX is a necessary evil when it comes to launching vehicles out of the earth's atmosphere.
As I have discussed before, the dangers inherent in using LOX are numerous and manifold in nature. It is a cryogen, operating at -297 degrees fahrenheit in it's liquid or condensed version. Exposed to anything above this temperature it will begin to boil with rapid explosive expansion on the order of 861-1 as it changes from a liquid to a gas. LOX is intolerant of hydrocarbons; such that even small traces of almost all known lubricants can cause instantaneous ignition on contact with LOX under almost any pressure at all.
Add just these two inherent conditions alone and you begin to see the difficulty in working with LOX. Since materials naturally tend to contract and shrink as temperatures drop close tolerances on rotating parts such as pumps needed to move LOX become problematic to lubricate effectively. Add in pressures often in the thousands of PSIG necessary to feed and sustain a rocket engine and the problems become infinitely greater.
LOX itself is inflammable. However, being the perfect oxidizer it strongly supports combustion on any type of fuel. It is such a strong supporter of combustion that it makes readily combustible fuels out of things that are normally imflammable. This includes but is not limited to the containment vessels used to store LOX. High grade 316 Stainless steel itself burns readily in such an oxygen rich environment.
As any boy scout can tell you, the basic fire "triangle" necessary to support combustion requires three things. Fuel, Oxidizer, and ignition source. In any LOX system you have two of the three present at all times. The perfect oxidizer (LOX, often at high pressure in our application) and abundant fuel (the storage vessel AND the vehicle structure in our case). All that is between a LOX system and utter catastrophe on a space vehicle is an ignition source.
Anyone who wants to see what a LOX fire looks like can easily look up both recent Falcon infernos, the Antarres accident last year, or any number of other accidents involving space vehicles that NASA has lost in the past. Much of the evidence of what caused the accident is consumed in the inferno that results from the introduction of an ignition source. However, the charred remains plus existing recorded data can tell the story of what happened if considered in enough detail. We have been quite successful in detailing such causes in the past and I expect we will this time as well.
As the letter in the above article points out, we do have some basic problems in both this investigation and the previous investigation of the Falcon vehicle losses. The first and most glaring problem is that both accident investigations were ran by and controlled by the same private entity that created the vehicle. I would also point out that this same entity, necessarily in an ultracompetitive environment, has a vested interest in coming to a rapid conclusion so that it can get back to the business of making money by launching payloads. This inherent conflict of interest should preclude the possibility that Space Ex heads up its own investigation that will determine when they get back into profitable operation.
Unfortunately, this basic common sense idea seems to be overridden in the present situation just as it was in the last investigation into the loss of a Space Ex vehicle. I would also point out that the something similar just happened in the investigation of the Antarres rocket belonging to Orbital Sciences the exploded shortly after liftoff in Wallops, Virginia last year. Having been personally involved in that investigation, I can assure you that this inherent conflict of interest not only hindered the investigation that NASA's oversight group performed; but eventually precluded the possibility of completely understanding the root cause of the loss of that particular vehicle (more on that a little later).
From the article....
3. Given the two recent failures of the Falcon 9, will the Air Force add more weight to mission assurance and schedule reliability vs. price in their future launch service procurements? If not please explain.
First off.... let me start out by saying that the investigation is still underway and no one knows for certain what happened to cause the Falcon rocket to explode on the pad during fueling operations on the pad at Cape Canaveral as of yet.
However, what we do know is that it did explode. Preliminary investigation reports indicate that it was a massive rupture of a Ghe vessel in the second stage LOX tank on the vehicle. Space Ex has been quick to point out that this is NOT the same issue that caused the spectacular mid air explosion on the first Falcon loss less than a year ago. At best, this is a partial truth. At worst, we may soon find that it has an identical cause in the very near future.
Having been personally involved in similar accident investigations in the past, I can say that the whole process of building a fault tree of possible causes and carefully and painstakingly running every possible cause to ground is a slow and painstaking process; especially when much of the evidence is no longer existing due to the inherent dangers that come with using a perfect oxidizer. LOX is Liquid Oxygen and it is the perfect oxidizer of which I am speaking.
LOX is necessary on rocket engines flying out of the earth's atmosphere for a couple of reasons, the main one being that all combustion requires oxygen to support it and once a vehicle is it out of the earth's atmosphere it cannot burn the oxygen in the surrounding atmosphere because there is none. Therefore, there must by an oxidizer on board and LOX is the most efficient oxidizer known to man. Since rocket engines are all about efficiency; ie.... weight to lift capacity on very narrow margins of failure.... LOX is a necessary evil when it comes to launching vehicles out of the earth's atmosphere.
As I have discussed before, the dangers inherent in using LOX are numerous and manifold in nature. It is a cryogen, operating at -297 degrees fahrenheit in it's liquid or condensed version. Exposed to anything above this temperature it will begin to boil with rapid explosive expansion on the order of 861-1 as it changes from a liquid to a gas. LOX is intolerant of hydrocarbons; such that even small traces of almost all known lubricants can cause instantaneous ignition on contact with LOX under almost any pressure at all.
Add just these two inherent conditions alone and you begin to see the difficulty in working with LOX. Since materials naturally tend to contract and shrink as temperatures drop close tolerances on rotating parts such as pumps needed to move LOX become problematic to lubricate effectively. Add in pressures often in the thousands of PSIG necessary to feed and sustain a rocket engine and the problems become infinitely greater.
LOX itself is inflammable. However, being the perfect oxidizer it strongly supports combustion on any type of fuel. It is such a strong supporter of combustion that it makes readily combustible fuels out of things that are normally imflammable. This includes but is not limited to the containment vessels used to store LOX. High grade 316 Stainless steel itself burns readily in such an oxygen rich environment.
As any boy scout can tell you, the basic fire "triangle" necessary to support combustion requires three things. Fuel, Oxidizer, and ignition source. In any LOX system you have two of the three present at all times. The perfect oxidizer (LOX, often at high pressure in our application) and abundant fuel (the storage vessel AND the vehicle structure in our case). All that is between a LOX system and utter catastrophe on a space vehicle is an ignition source.
Anyone who wants to see what a LOX fire looks like can easily look up both recent Falcon infernos, the Antarres accident last year, or any number of other accidents involving space vehicles that NASA has lost in the past. Much of the evidence of what caused the accident is consumed in the inferno that results from the introduction of an ignition source. However, the charred remains plus existing recorded data can tell the story of what happened if considered in enough detail. We have been quite successful in detailing such causes in the past and I expect we will this time as well.
As the letter in the above article points out, we do have some basic problems in both this investigation and the previous investigation of the Falcon vehicle losses. The first and most glaring problem is that both accident investigations were ran by and controlled by the same private entity that created the vehicle. I would also point out that this same entity, necessarily in an ultracompetitive environment, has a vested interest in coming to a rapid conclusion so that it can get back to the business of making money by launching payloads. This inherent conflict of interest should preclude the possibility that Space Ex heads up its own investigation that will determine when they get back into profitable operation.
Unfortunately, this basic common sense idea seems to be overridden in the present situation just as it was in the last investigation into the loss of a Space Ex vehicle. I would also point out that the something similar just happened in the investigation of the Antarres rocket belonging to Orbital Sciences the exploded shortly after liftoff in Wallops, Virginia last year. Having been personally involved in that investigation, I can assure you that this inherent conflict of interest not only hindered the investigation that NASA's oversight group performed; but eventually precluded the possibility of completely understanding the root cause of the loss of that particular vehicle (more on that a little later).
Commercial Space Problems
I am a little disgusted at the moment. The recent explosion at Cape Canaveral is the last in a string of accidents on commercial space ventures that were completely avoidable. It is way too premature for anyone to know what caused this one yet but recent experience has taught me that the cause will once again be found to be schedule haste combined with the reckless and deadly nature of commercial space.
I have written about NASA's accidents and how they were all caused by this same problem before. Schedule pressure is dangerous in the space flight industry. It has to be offset by the understanding that technical concerns ALWAYS overrides schedule pressure. This is literally impossible in commercial space because there is nothing that counterbalances schedule pressure in commercial space. Combine this with a total lack of practical experience that prevails at most commercial space companies and you get what we have now; a continuing string of disasters.
In the first place space flight travel is hard. It takes extremely powerful engines to lift cargo out of earth's orbit. These engines need oxidizers such as liquid oxygen to burn at the rates needed and liquid oxygen is an extremely unforgiving substance to deal with. Because of the energy involved and the close ratio between energy available and load to be lifted space flight vehicles operate on the bare margins of safety to begin with. The standard pressure to strength ratio for mechanical facilities on earth is 4-1. In other words if a tank is designed to withstand 100 pounds of pressure per inch it is designed to withstand 400 pounds of pressure per inch. On a space vehicle, this same tank is designed to withstand 150 pounds of pressure per inch, or 1.5-1.
Add in the extreme temperature changes involved in using a cryogen like Liquid Oxygen (-297 Degrees F) and one can begin to understand the difficulties involved. Each component is designed on the ragged edge of strength to weight ratio to maximize the effective cargo that such a vehicle can carry. Why not just go to 4-1 safety factors you might ask? Well, if we did that we wouldn't have the energy to get out of earth's orbit.
NASA has a long record of dealing with these margins yet they have also experienced many different failures of their own in its own history. Besides the two shuttle disasters that everyone is familiar with there were a lot of other accidents in testing and design phases at different NASA centers across the nation. It is an inherently dangerous business that requires inherently stringent testing and design characteristics. I think everyone understands this. Unfortunately, the degree of stringency is where the argument comes in.
There is a huge disagreement on this at the moment within the commercial space industry. NASA is charged with oversight on commercial space entities and I can tell you from direct experience NASA is losing the argument at the moment. Commerical space entities have a lot of Congressional support from local districts where these ventures are benefitting the local economy with good paying jobs. Hence the continuing level of confidence and support from Congress espousing the full confidence in these ventures. I can assure you that this level of confidence is NOT being expressed by NASA employees charged with actually doing the oversight.
In the next few posts I hope to go over some details about why these problems are occurring and what the particular problems are. The basic struggle is between the technical experts at NASA who have experienced these problems in the past and a young, energetic group working private space who believe NASA is hopelessly slow and restrictive by its very nature. Neither group is completely wrong in their assumptions about the other. However, the reason that NASA is slow and restrictive is that they have already learned some of the lessons that commercial space is struggling with now.
I have written about NASA's accidents and how they were all caused by this same problem before. Schedule pressure is dangerous in the space flight industry. It has to be offset by the understanding that technical concerns ALWAYS overrides schedule pressure. This is literally impossible in commercial space because there is nothing that counterbalances schedule pressure in commercial space. Combine this with a total lack of practical experience that prevails at most commercial space companies and you get what we have now; a continuing string of disasters.
In the first place space flight travel is hard. It takes extremely powerful engines to lift cargo out of earth's orbit. These engines need oxidizers such as liquid oxygen to burn at the rates needed and liquid oxygen is an extremely unforgiving substance to deal with. Because of the energy involved and the close ratio between energy available and load to be lifted space flight vehicles operate on the bare margins of safety to begin with. The standard pressure to strength ratio for mechanical facilities on earth is 4-1. In other words if a tank is designed to withstand 100 pounds of pressure per inch it is designed to withstand 400 pounds of pressure per inch. On a space vehicle, this same tank is designed to withstand 150 pounds of pressure per inch, or 1.5-1.
Add in the extreme temperature changes involved in using a cryogen like Liquid Oxygen (-297 Degrees F) and one can begin to understand the difficulties involved. Each component is designed on the ragged edge of strength to weight ratio to maximize the effective cargo that such a vehicle can carry. Why not just go to 4-1 safety factors you might ask? Well, if we did that we wouldn't have the energy to get out of earth's orbit.
NASA has a long record of dealing with these margins yet they have also experienced many different failures of their own in its own history. Besides the two shuttle disasters that everyone is familiar with there were a lot of other accidents in testing and design phases at different NASA centers across the nation. It is an inherently dangerous business that requires inherently stringent testing and design characteristics. I think everyone understands this. Unfortunately, the degree of stringency is where the argument comes in.
There is a huge disagreement on this at the moment within the commercial space industry. NASA is charged with oversight on commercial space entities and I can tell you from direct experience NASA is losing the argument at the moment. Commerical space entities have a lot of Congressional support from local districts where these ventures are benefitting the local economy with good paying jobs. Hence the continuing level of confidence and support from Congress espousing the full confidence in these ventures. I can assure you that this level of confidence is NOT being expressed by NASA employees charged with actually doing the oversight.
In the next few posts I hope to go over some details about why these problems are occurring and what the particular problems are. The basic struggle is between the technical experts at NASA who have experienced these problems in the past and a young, energetic group working private space who believe NASA is hopelessly slow and restrictive by its very nature. Neither group is completely wrong in their assumptions about the other. However, the reason that NASA is slow and restrictive is that they have already learned some of the lessons that commercial space is struggling with now.
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
The Real Problem with NASA
Many years ago when I first went to work on a NASA facility I was amazed at the complexity of their testing programs. There is an old saying about rocket science that inversely describes the complexity of rocket design by claiming that (insert the field here) is “not rocket science.” It’s not unusual in Huntsville to see bumper stickers that proudly proclaim “Actually…. I AM a rocket scientist.” Putting things into space and maintaining them there is hard. It is complicated and the environment is unforgiving of mistakes.
NASA learned early that small mistakes and minor miscalculations lead to large disasters. Throughout the early years we learned at an accelerated pace that we must minimize the unknowns and maximize the testing to cover every possible variable. Vehicle designs are redundant for all critical failure possibilities. We simply can’t afford to lose a vehicle, more especially a vehicle with people on board because of one component failure especially when we understand that there are a vast number of components in each vehicle.
I was not working at NASA when the Challenger accident occurred but I was here when the Columbia accident occurred. One basic cultural problem led to both failures; schedule pressure overrode technical concerns. It really is that simple. NASA works off of an annually renewable budget that has to be approved by Congress. It is a special executive branch agency similar to the CIA in that the president appoints the director and largely controls its main directives. The head of the agency is approved by the Senate and the budget is controlled by Congress.
Both Shuttle disasters were caused by schedule pressure that was brought to bear based upon funding concerns. NASA’s funding is a political football that is regularly booted about when it comes time to pass a federal budget. At its funding peak during the Apollo buildup NASA received about 4% of the federal budget. In 1975 this fell to below 1% where it has remained since that time. In the early 2000’s it began falling again to the point where by 2012 it has fell below .5%. It has languished there since that time.
The schedule pressure that caused the accidents came from trying to meet projections that had been agreed to with Congress. NASA has learned by experience that delays and slips of projected schedules come at a dear expense. Congress regularly defunds programs that fall behind schedule. NASA reacts by doing the same thing on a smaller scale. When a large program falls behind projected schedule, small programs are defunded on a regular basis.
As the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) report that came out after Columbia crashed points out, it is this schedule pressure that led to this accident and the Challenger accident before. Unfortunately, we seem to have taken this report and concentrated on the technical aspects of what caused the actual vehicle to crash without fully comprehending that the larger budgetary concerns are what led to the decision making process that crashed Columbia. In other words, it wasn’t a technical issue that caused the accident; but rather a whole series of decisions before and after the technical issue that were overwhelmingly driven by budgetary concerns at the top levels of NASA.
There is a smoking gun involved but it was loaded, primed, and fired by a budgetary weakness at the heart of NASA’s existence. Annually renewable budgets based upon projections of research and development are inherently inaccurate entities. No amount of Congressional scrutiny is going to change that. If we intend on continuing to evolve our presence in space, and I would suggest that as a matter of national security we don’t really have a choice in that matter, we are going to have to understand that it is research and development. Research and development is by its very nature unpredictable.
Leaving that aside for a moment, I would like to point out that we have not changed the process that caused both accidents. As a matter of fact, budgetary concerns for every increasingly smaller amounts of funding have tended to sharpen and increase that pressure. In other words, we have not only not alleviated the problem, we have made it worse.
Currently, NASA is being redirected to concentrate on interplanetary exploration. Lower Earth Orbit space is being handed off to private industry. This includes satellite launch capabilities and Space Station access. Make no mistake about it, NASA is still tasked with funding the research and development necessary to accomplish this but the money is going to private industry. People seem to think a lot of private investors are ponying up the money for Space Ex, Orbital Sciences, and Boeing to handle these concerns but nothing could be further from the truth.
Developing launch vehicles and systems is still research and development. The only difference for private entities is that there is nothing to offset the schedule pressure. In other words, the competitive process wherein the winner takes all has led to even more schedule pressure. The prize is government funding. The loser gets to lose both their funding and their reputation. We have seen the results of this process, both at Wallops Island when the Antares rocket of Orbital Sciences blew up shortly after takeoff and at Cape Canaveral in June when a Space Ex Falcon exploded two minutes into its flight. We can add to that a Russian Progress 59 freighter that burned up in Earth’s atmosphere on May 7, 2015 to present a clear picture of just how hard space flight actually happens to be.
Private companies exist for one reason and one reason only; to make a profit. No other concern is even a close second. It is ludicrous to suppose that schedule pressure based upon budgetary concerns that have caused a government agency to make bad decisions will somehow be better handled by a private concern solely driven by profit. It is just not possible for a private company to react in any other way.
Having been intimately involved in this industry for thirty years now, I have seen a lot of NASA programs come and go. All of them were feasible. All of them were well thought out plans for getting to the next step, for continuing the process of astounding technological advancement that has been the hallmark of the US space program from its inception. All of them were killed by budgetary concerns.
Until we get a handle on how to fund research and development for long term goals I don’t see much possibility that things will change. Private space is not the answer now and it never will be. There is no profit in private space. There is a profit in the indirect and usually unknowable advancement that such technology produces but that is long term and unforeseeable.
The technological advancements that have come from NASA’s efforts are vast and quite astounding as to how they have affected the every-day life of every human on earth. I suspect this will continue for a long as NASA exists. It’s a shame that they are currently being limited by the narrowness of vision that doesn’t allow us to see the whole picture. We don’t seem to recognize the vast Forrest of opportunity that space exploration has produced because we are too concerned with what matchsticks cost.
NASA learned early that small mistakes and minor miscalculations lead to large disasters. Throughout the early years we learned at an accelerated pace that we must minimize the unknowns and maximize the testing to cover every possible variable. Vehicle designs are redundant for all critical failure possibilities. We simply can’t afford to lose a vehicle, more especially a vehicle with people on board because of one component failure especially when we understand that there are a vast number of components in each vehicle.
I was not working at NASA when the Challenger accident occurred but I was here when the Columbia accident occurred. One basic cultural problem led to both failures; schedule pressure overrode technical concerns. It really is that simple. NASA works off of an annually renewable budget that has to be approved by Congress. It is a special executive branch agency similar to the CIA in that the president appoints the director and largely controls its main directives. The head of the agency is approved by the Senate and the budget is controlled by Congress.
Both Shuttle disasters were caused by schedule pressure that was brought to bear based upon funding concerns. NASA’s funding is a political football that is regularly booted about when it comes time to pass a federal budget. At its funding peak during the Apollo buildup NASA received about 4% of the federal budget. In 1975 this fell to below 1% where it has remained since that time. In the early 2000’s it began falling again to the point where by 2012 it has fell below .5%. It has languished there since that time.
The schedule pressure that caused the accidents came from trying to meet projections that had been agreed to with Congress. NASA has learned by experience that delays and slips of projected schedules come at a dear expense. Congress regularly defunds programs that fall behind schedule. NASA reacts by doing the same thing on a smaller scale. When a large program falls behind projected schedule, small programs are defunded on a regular basis.
As the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) report that came out after Columbia crashed points out, it is this schedule pressure that led to this accident and the Challenger accident before. Unfortunately, we seem to have taken this report and concentrated on the technical aspects of what caused the actual vehicle to crash without fully comprehending that the larger budgetary concerns are what led to the decision making process that crashed Columbia. In other words, it wasn’t a technical issue that caused the accident; but rather a whole series of decisions before and after the technical issue that were overwhelmingly driven by budgetary concerns at the top levels of NASA.
There is a smoking gun involved but it was loaded, primed, and fired by a budgetary weakness at the heart of NASA’s existence. Annually renewable budgets based upon projections of research and development are inherently inaccurate entities. No amount of Congressional scrutiny is going to change that. If we intend on continuing to evolve our presence in space, and I would suggest that as a matter of national security we don’t really have a choice in that matter, we are going to have to understand that it is research and development. Research and development is by its very nature unpredictable.
Leaving that aside for a moment, I would like to point out that we have not changed the process that caused both accidents. As a matter of fact, budgetary concerns for every increasingly smaller amounts of funding have tended to sharpen and increase that pressure. In other words, we have not only not alleviated the problem, we have made it worse.
Currently, NASA is being redirected to concentrate on interplanetary exploration. Lower Earth Orbit space is being handed off to private industry. This includes satellite launch capabilities and Space Station access. Make no mistake about it, NASA is still tasked with funding the research and development necessary to accomplish this but the money is going to private industry. People seem to think a lot of private investors are ponying up the money for Space Ex, Orbital Sciences, and Boeing to handle these concerns but nothing could be further from the truth.
Developing launch vehicles and systems is still research and development. The only difference for private entities is that there is nothing to offset the schedule pressure. In other words, the competitive process wherein the winner takes all has led to even more schedule pressure. The prize is government funding. The loser gets to lose both their funding and their reputation. We have seen the results of this process, both at Wallops Island when the Antares rocket of Orbital Sciences blew up shortly after takeoff and at Cape Canaveral in June when a Space Ex Falcon exploded two minutes into its flight. We can add to that a Russian Progress 59 freighter that burned up in Earth’s atmosphere on May 7, 2015 to present a clear picture of just how hard space flight actually happens to be.
Private companies exist for one reason and one reason only; to make a profit. No other concern is even a close second. It is ludicrous to suppose that schedule pressure based upon budgetary concerns that have caused a government agency to make bad decisions will somehow be better handled by a private concern solely driven by profit. It is just not possible for a private company to react in any other way.
Having been intimately involved in this industry for thirty years now, I have seen a lot of NASA programs come and go. All of them were feasible. All of them were well thought out plans for getting to the next step, for continuing the process of astounding technological advancement that has been the hallmark of the US space program from its inception. All of them were killed by budgetary concerns.
Until we get a handle on how to fund research and development for long term goals I don’t see much possibility that things will change. Private space is not the answer now and it never will be. There is no profit in private space. There is a profit in the indirect and usually unknowable advancement that such technology produces but that is long term and unforeseeable.
The technological advancements that have come from NASA’s efforts are vast and quite astounding as to how they have affected the every-day life of every human on earth. I suspect this will continue for a long as NASA exists. It’s a shame that they are currently being limited by the narrowness of vision that doesn’t allow us to see the whole picture. We don’t seem to recognize the vast Forrest of opportunity that space exploration has produced because we are too concerned with what matchsticks cost.
Thursday, September 1, 2016
Red Devils and Munchkins
Years ago I worked with a crane operator who had his own pronunciation system. JN was an excellent crane operator and a smart guy besides. He ran several successful little side businesses at the same time he worked in our technician crew. He was the kind of guy who would give you the shirt off his back if you needed help but would also squeeze the last nickel out of every business transaction. I liked him immediately when I met him.
JN used some of the strangest words I have ever heard anyone use. It wasn’t that he couldn’t enunciate he just enunciated differently. Every one of the words he struggled with sounded like the correct word but they were always just a little bit off. A computer was a suputer in JN’s language. He drove an old El Camino truck that had been pristinely restored. It was not an El Camino but an El Torino to JN. There was a long list of things that JN just didn’t seem to want to take the time to pronounce correctly. I could never figure out if he just wasn’t interested in pronunciation or if he just favored his own way of doing it over that used by everyone else.
He soon was a little famous in our shop for his use of non-words. People would ask him to tell stories about things just to catch the string of alternate pronunciations that always spewed force when he did. Sometimes people would correct him but he paid it no mind at all when they did. One of our engineers carefully corrected him on his usage of the term computer during a scheduling meeting.
JN: “We couldn’t get the funtroller for the suputer working on that new pump engine so we ran it automanually.”
Engineer: “Uh…. you mean the controller?”
JN: “Yes…. Ricky said there was something wrong with the communication manual or funtroller so we ran it automanually.”
Engineer: “The communication manual?”
JN: “Yes…. the manual that talks to the suputer.”
Engineer: “You mean computer?”
JN: “Yes… the supputer has to talk to the communication manual to run by itself so we ran it in automanual.”
Engineer: “You mean communication module?”
JN: “I already told you that.”
Engineer: “Did you run in automatic or manual mode?”
JN: “We ran it by hand, you know… the old fashioned way.”
You could easily get on a redundant regressive loop of growing confusion talking with JN unless you understood his language. We took to calling it “JN speak” and the best thing to do was learn to make associations between what he said and what he actually meant. Once you got used to it, it wasn’t too bad but initially it could throw a monkey wrench into communication that was pretty frustrating; especially if you were in a hurry.
As careless as JN was in his use of language, he was the polar opposite in his fastidiousness in almost every other aspect of his life. He worked in one of the pumphouses that supplied cooling water to the test stands at NASA when he wasn’t operating cranes. Since most of the parts of the big locomotive diesels required careful crane handling control in putting them in place during engine rebuilds he was invaluable to the head mechanic. He always insisted on JN being the operator when he was rebuilding engines as he JN was amazingly deft in handling and moving things with a crane.
When the pumphouse was running supporting tests, JN was an operator who ran the control system that ramped the engines and operating the valve systems in the pumphouse. He took this same level of exacting fastidiousness to this pursuit as well. He was an excellent operator who knew the system backwards and forwards and was always one step ahead in his mind when following operating procedures.
On days where the test stands experienced delays, the pumphouse would go into standby mode with engines idling; simply maintaining water pressure on the coolant and fire control systems until whatever was wrong on the test stand could be worked out. Some of these delays were pretty long and boring. On those days, JN always had some sort of home project in his car to work on. He would bring silverware in to polish or kitchen knives to sharpen; something along those lines while he waited. During one such delay I was working on repairing some of the large 54” water valve controllers on the system while we were in delay so I was in constant communication with the pumphouse. As we finished our repairs and had JN cycle test the valves to check limit switch positions, the test stand came online to tell us we were 20 minutes from test.
We got in our truck and drove back to the pumphouse to wait out the test. It was a short cycle test which was supposed to run for 3 minutes; after which we could resume our system repairs. When we got back to the pumphouse control room I noticed JN was busily polishing some metal pieces that he had wrapped in a shop rag. Curious, I looked over his shoulder to see what looked like a brass door hinge in his hands and several more still wrapped in the shop rag.
Me…. “Is that a door hinge?”
JN…. “Yes” he said as nonchalant as ever.I noticed he also had a can of Brasso and was steadily making the hinge shine to a high polish.
Me… “Why are you polishing door hinges?”
JN…. “It’s just that time. I polish all of them once a year,” as if every sane person pulled their door hinges off to polish them annually.
Me….”uh…. ok.” What could I say? I am not exaggerating when I say that if I live to be a hundred I would likely never have thought of such a thing. I looked over at Clinton who also worked in the pumphouse and he was just smiling broadly as he shrugged his shoulders. That was JN to a tee. Fastidious and at the same time incomprehensible.
Some months later as we were all eating lunch one day JN launched into an angry explanation that something was tearing up his new manicured lawn. JN had just paid a lot of money to a landscaping company to redo his lawn to his exacting standards. JN hated to part with money to begin with but money wasted was a cardinal sin in his eyes. He was quite incensed about the whole thing, grumbling about how much money he spent and how it was all thrown away.
JN… “I may as well burn a wet dog.”
Me…. “What??”
JN… “I spent enough money on that yard to burn a wet dog and all I got to show for it is a bunch of panholes.”
Me…. “Panholes?”
JN… “Critter holes.”
Me…. “Is something digging in your yard, digging potholes?”
JN… “Yes. Panholes; I’m going to get my rifle and shoot the little bastards.”
Me… “What are you going to shoot?”
JN… “The little bastards digging holes; Munchkins.”
Me…. thinking…. “Uh…. you mean chipmunks?”
JN…. “Yes… the little bastards are tearing up my yard and I am going to start shooting them.”
I knew JN lived in a very nice area of Huntsville but it was also very crowded with houses and completely in the middle of town. Shooting a rifle inside the city limits was not a good idea.
Me… “JN…. You can’t be shooting a rifle in your front yard. The cops will come arrest you.”
JN…. “Well then…. THEY can come shoot the little bastards but I ain’t going to let them tear my whole yard up after I spent a fortune getting it that way I want it.”
Me…. “I don’t think they will do that either. But you need to talk to them before you get a rifle out in the front yard and go to blasting away at Chipmunks.”
JN drew a puff on his pipe and seemed to mull that over for a few minutes.
JN… “Aye god, you might be right. I think I’ll call the sheriff’s department and tell them.”
JN walked over to the desk in the shop and got out the phone book to call the Sheriff’s department. He was still mad but at least he was not likely to get arrested by calling them first. Besides, I thought they might have a suggestion of someone who could get rid of the chipmunks as well. The conversation that followed was one that I could only hear one side of. I can well imagine what went on at the other end of it but could only judge it by how loud the tone got from the sound that escaped the earpiece.
JN…. “Hello… I have a problem and need to speak to someone about it.”
After a brief pause…
JN…. “Well… I just paid a lot of money to get my yard redone and now some munckins are digging it up. I want to just get my rifle and shoot the little devils but my friend tells me that I can’t do that in this city.”
Another pause….
JN….”Yes maam….. they are digging holes in my yard.”
Another pause…
JN…. “I don’t know why; it’s just the kind of thing munchkins like to do I guess.”
Another pause…
JN…. “You know MUNCHKINS,” as if saying it louder should clear up the misconception. “Little red devils. I’m going to get my rifle and light their little butts up the next time I see one in my yard.”
Another pause followed by a rising tone coming from the other end of the phone.
JN… “Never mind where I live. I would shoot them for tearing up your yard too. I hate the little devils.”
By this time I was trying to catch his attention…
Me…. “JN…. Tell them chipmunks! Say CHIPMUNK!”
JN… “That’s what I told her, MUNCHKINS.”
More rising tone on the other end of the phone….
JN… “I’ll shoot the little devils if I want. You can come bury their little butts if I catch any more of them in my yard.” He was yelling into the phone.
Me…. “CHIPMUNKS, CHIPMUNKS “
I was trying to yell loud enough so that whoever was on the other end of the phone could hear so they wouldn’t think a lot of local neighborhood children were getting ready to be assassinated by some crazed lawn care fanatic.
JN… “OK… then YOU can come kill them, but they are NOT going to tear up my lawnscaping anymore; I can gay-run-tee you that.”
Before anyone could say anything else, JN hung up the phone. It’s probably a good thing they didn’t have caller ID in those days. I tried to explain to JN the difference between chipmunks and the vision most people get in their head when you say “munchkin” but he had no interest in my explanation. The Sheriff’s department probably gets their fair share of strange calls to begin with but I could tell from the rising tone escaping the earpiece that someone got a good story to tell later on that morning; probably in horror.
JN used some of the strangest words I have ever heard anyone use. It wasn’t that he couldn’t enunciate he just enunciated differently. Every one of the words he struggled with sounded like the correct word but they were always just a little bit off. A computer was a suputer in JN’s language. He drove an old El Camino truck that had been pristinely restored. It was not an El Camino but an El Torino to JN. There was a long list of things that JN just didn’t seem to want to take the time to pronounce correctly. I could never figure out if he just wasn’t interested in pronunciation or if he just favored his own way of doing it over that used by everyone else.
He soon was a little famous in our shop for his use of non-words. People would ask him to tell stories about things just to catch the string of alternate pronunciations that always spewed force when he did. Sometimes people would correct him but he paid it no mind at all when they did. One of our engineers carefully corrected him on his usage of the term computer during a scheduling meeting.
JN: “We couldn’t get the funtroller for the suputer working on that new pump engine so we ran it automanually.”
Engineer: “Uh…. you mean the controller?”
JN: “Yes…. Ricky said there was something wrong with the communication manual or funtroller so we ran it automanually.”
Engineer: “The communication manual?”
JN: “Yes…. the manual that talks to the suputer.”
Engineer: “You mean computer?”
JN: “Yes… the supputer has to talk to the communication manual to run by itself so we ran it in automanual.”
Engineer: “You mean communication module?”
JN: “I already told you that.”
Engineer: “Did you run in automatic or manual mode?”
JN: “We ran it by hand, you know… the old fashioned way.”
You could easily get on a redundant regressive loop of growing confusion talking with JN unless you understood his language. We took to calling it “JN speak” and the best thing to do was learn to make associations between what he said and what he actually meant. Once you got used to it, it wasn’t too bad but initially it could throw a monkey wrench into communication that was pretty frustrating; especially if you were in a hurry.
As careless as JN was in his use of language, he was the polar opposite in his fastidiousness in almost every other aspect of his life. He worked in one of the pumphouses that supplied cooling water to the test stands at NASA when he wasn’t operating cranes. Since most of the parts of the big locomotive diesels required careful crane handling control in putting them in place during engine rebuilds he was invaluable to the head mechanic. He always insisted on JN being the operator when he was rebuilding engines as he JN was amazingly deft in handling and moving things with a crane.
When the pumphouse was running supporting tests, JN was an operator who ran the control system that ramped the engines and operating the valve systems in the pumphouse. He took this same level of exacting fastidiousness to this pursuit as well. He was an excellent operator who knew the system backwards and forwards and was always one step ahead in his mind when following operating procedures.
On days where the test stands experienced delays, the pumphouse would go into standby mode with engines idling; simply maintaining water pressure on the coolant and fire control systems until whatever was wrong on the test stand could be worked out. Some of these delays were pretty long and boring. On those days, JN always had some sort of home project in his car to work on. He would bring silverware in to polish or kitchen knives to sharpen; something along those lines while he waited. During one such delay I was working on repairing some of the large 54” water valve controllers on the system while we were in delay so I was in constant communication with the pumphouse. As we finished our repairs and had JN cycle test the valves to check limit switch positions, the test stand came online to tell us we were 20 minutes from test.
We got in our truck and drove back to the pumphouse to wait out the test. It was a short cycle test which was supposed to run for 3 minutes; after which we could resume our system repairs. When we got back to the pumphouse control room I noticed JN was busily polishing some metal pieces that he had wrapped in a shop rag. Curious, I looked over his shoulder to see what looked like a brass door hinge in his hands and several more still wrapped in the shop rag.
Me…. “Is that a door hinge?”
JN…. “Yes” he said as nonchalant as ever.I noticed he also had a can of Brasso and was steadily making the hinge shine to a high polish.
Me… “Why are you polishing door hinges?”
JN…. “It’s just that time. I polish all of them once a year,” as if every sane person pulled their door hinges off to polish them annually.
Me….”uh…. ok.” What could I say? I am not exaggerating when I say that if I live to be a hundred I would likely never have thought of such a thing. I looked over at Clinton who also worked in the pumphouse and he was just smiling broadly as he shrugged his shoulders. That was JN to a tee. Fastidious and at the same time incomprehensible.
Some months later as we were all eating lunch one day JN launched into an angry explanation that something was tearing up his new manicured lawn. JN had just paid a lot of money to a landscaping company to redo his lawn to his exacting standards. JN hated to part with money to begin with but money wasted was a cardinal sin in his eyes. He was quite incensed about the whole thing, grumbling about how much money he spent and how it was all thrown away.
JN… “I may as well burn a wet dog.”
Me…. “What??”
JN… “I spent enough money on that yard to burn a wet dog and all I got to show for it is a bunch of panholes.”
Me…. “Panholes?”
JN… “Critter holes.”
Me…. “Is something digging in your yard, digging potholes?”
JN… “Yes. Panholes; I’m going to get my rifle and shoot the little bastards.”
Me… “What are you going to shoot?”
JN… “The little bastards digging holes; Munchkins.”
Me…. thinking…. “Uh…. you mean chipmunks?”
JN…. “Yes… the little bastards are tearing up my yard and I am going to start shooting them.”
I knew JN lived in a very nice area of Huntsville but it was also very crowded with houses and completely in the middle of town. Shooting a rifle inside the city limits was not a good idea.
Me… “JN…. You can’t be shooting a rifle in your front yard. The cops will come arrest you.”
JN…. “Well then…. THEY can come shoot the little bastards but I ain’t going to let them tear my whole yard up after I spent a fortune getting it that way I want it.”
Me…. “I don’t think they will do that either. But you need to talk to them before you get a rifle out in the front yard and go to blasting away at Chipmunks.”
JN drew a puff on his pipe and seemed to mull that over for a few minutes.
JN… “Aye god, you might be right. I think I’ll call the sheriff’s department and tell them.”
JN walked over to the desk in the shop and got out the phone book to call the Sheriff’s department. He was still mad but at least he was not likely to get arrested by calling them first. Besides, I thought they might have a suggestion of someone who could get rid of the chipmunks as well. The conversation that followed was one that I could only hear one side of. I can well imagine what went on at the other end of it but could only judge it by how loud the tone got from the sound that escaped the earpiece.
JN…. “Hello… I have a problem and need to speak to someone about it.”
After a brief pause…
JN…. “Well… I just paid a lot of money to get my yard redone and now some munckins are digging it up. I want to just get my rifle and shoot the little devils but my friend tells me that I can’t do that in this city.”
Another pause….
JN….”Yes maam….. they are digging holes in my yard.”
Another pause…
JN…. “I don’t know why; it’s just the kind of thing munchkins like to do I guess.”
Another pause…
JN…. “You know MUNCHKINS,” as if saying it louder should clear up the misconception. “Little red devils. I’m going to get my rifle and light their little butts up the next time I see one in my yard.”
Another pause followed by a rising tone coming from the other end of the phone.
JN… “Never mind where I live. I would shoot them for tearing up your yard too. I hate the little devils.”
By this time I was trying to catch his attention…
Me…. “JN…. Tell them chipmunks! Say CHIPMUNK!”
JN… “That’s what I told her, MUNCHKINS.”
More rising tone on the other end of the phone….
JN… “I’ll shoot the little devils if I want. You can come bury their little butts if I catch any more of them in my yard.” He was yelling into the phone.
Me…. “CHIPMUNKS, CHIPMUNKS “
I was trying to yell loud enough so that whoever was on the other end of the phone could hear so they wouldn’t think a lot of local neighborhood children were getting ready to be assassinated by some crazed lawn care fanatic.
JN… “OK… then YOU can come kill them, but they are NOT going to tear up my lawnscaping anymore; I can gay-run-tee you that.”
Before anyone could say anything else, JN hung up the phone. It’s probably a good thing they didn’t have caller ID in those days. I tried to explain to JN the difference between chipmunks and the vision most people get in their head when you say “munchkin” but he had no interest in my explanation. The Sheriff’s department probably gets their fair share of strange calls to begin with but I could tell from the rising tone escaping the earpiece that someone got a good story to tell later on that morning; probably in horror.
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Ducks and Chickens
My oldest younger sister got an incubator for Christmas one year when she was 12 or 13 years old. It was what she had asked for, which might seem strange to some, but living on the farm it was quite useful. She had just gotten involved in 4-H programs at her school and it seemed an instant project generator to have an incubator.
4-H programs were quite prevalent in those days, especially at the rural schools levels. 4-H stands for head, heart, hands, and health. The organization is an outreach program that sponsors all manner of volunteer competition for rural kids. The local county fairs always had numerous contests covering everything from vegetables grown to livestock raised. It is still an active program. The last time I went to the local county fair I noticed there was a large metal building for the cooking and crop growing competitions along with the still existent barns for the livestock.
My sisters were all quite active in 4-H for many years, both in growing and showing livestock and some sampling of vegetable growing as well. My mother, as a school teacher was also one of the volunteer sponsors for the local 4-H so it was pretty much a part of my younger siblings lives the whole time they were growing up.
The incubator was probably their first adventure in that world and it was quite an adventure. The incubator was a round metallic structure about 12 inches tall and 30 inches in diameter. It contained a thermostat and heating element to keep the eggs within at a constant temperature during the incubation period before they hatched. For chickens, this period is a relatively short 21 days more or less. It is a little longer for ducks, usually another week or so.
The process is fairly simple, you take some fertilized new eggs and put in the incubator which controls the temperature to around 90 Degrees F. Our incubator also used water in the bottom of the pan to control humidity. It is not too hard to control the water level and humidity with a little practice and we had quite a high success rate. The eggs need to be turned regularly, we usually did this twice a day. The last piece of the puzzle is to try and avoid contaminating the shells with any foreign debris. We were very careful to handle them with gloves as we gathered them and turned them in the incubator.
We started out with eggs from our chickens but soon branched out to more exotic types of chickens. My sister’s loved the little Japanese silkies that have a kind of silky topknot on their head. We also had several of these types that have feathers sprout just above their feet so that they look like they are wearing feathery shoes. My oldest sister would put notices up at the Farmer’s Coop and feed stores in the area asking for eggs of all manner of chickens and ducks.
The end result of this was a yard full of exotic chickens by the time she got out of high school. The one rule my dad made was that we could not help any of them out of their shells. The chicks would usually peck a hole in the shell to breathe but it might take a whole day for them to get the strength to completely escape. It is a critical period for them and if they aren’t strong enough they sometimes never make it completely out. Naturally when the hatch date got close we anxiously peered through the little glass viewing lens in the top of the incubator, anxious to see how many would hatch.
I must admit that we weren’t always completely true to my dad’s rule. He never said anything but I know he was aware of it when we occasionally had a crippled chicken or duck hatch out. We once had a Peking duck with one foot that was balled up so that it limped continuously. It was the only duck that hatched out of the batch and I suspect he had some help in doing so. He lived for quite a while but never seemed to realize he was a duck as he hung around with the chicks he hatched with for his whole life.
During one incubation period of all ducks the heater element on the incubator failed. We were less than a week from their hatch date but they were not going to make it without the heater. My mom, ever the pragmatist, told us to take the duck eggs and put under a hen that was setting in the back of the hay shed beside the house. We took seven of the duck eggs and put under the hen who was sitting on two eggs at the time. She didn’t seem to mind the addition and seemed quite happy to have such a large brood of eggs to sit on.
The ducks began to hatch out right on time a week later. The hen didn’t seem to notice that the setting period was pretty short. She was quite proud of her little hatchlings, completely unaware that they were an entirely different species. The baby ducks didn’t seem to mind either as they happily got under her every night when it came time to go to roost. The daytime however, was a little less of a smooth transition for the hen.
Hens typically begin taking their chicks out to forage when they are very small, just a few days old. The mother hen will constantly cluck and “sing” to the chicks in a high pitched kind of crooning noise as they follow her around the yard. She will scratch and dig up seeds and small insects for them to eat, constantly communicating with them with her clucking and crooning. The clucking gets more staccato or rapid when she finds an especially tasty morsel for them and the chicks will react accordingly in a very short while, speeding up with the pace of her clucking or wandering slowly around with the smooth crooning. For a few days at least, the hen is forced to herd the chicks; keeping them in formation and gently pushing them in the right direction. Soon they are trained to follow her voice signals and she leads them proudly around the yard.
The ducks were not equipped with either the understanding of this language or simply an interest in being led around. I have since noticed the ducklings are usually simply herded around by their mothers but this little set of ducks seemed to largely ignore both her coaxing and her attempts to herd them in any direction. The upshot of this was that the poor hen was constantly running around behind them, clucking and crooning while they simply went wherever they wanted. Occasionally, she would manage to get ahead of them and show them a bug to eat but for the most part they simply ignored her until it came time to go to roost at night.
I imagine it was somewhat embarrassing for the hen to have children who so openly ignored her. I doubt it was something the other hens approved of the way she had to follow the ducks around instead of leading them. This seemed to put her on edge as she was quite frantic by the end of the day each day. She was only able to be comfortable when they got under her at night. The rest of the day she seemed distraught most of the time, no doubt a little ashamed that her brood was so unruly and disrespectful.
The ducks also grew at a high rate of speed so it wasn’t long at all before even this comfort was taken away from her. The sight of her trying to set on six ducks almost her own size at night was a little comical but I am sure it wasn’t for her. It was just one more failure in a long line of disappointing failures for her as a mother. They managed to somehow sleep under her for quite a while as it was the one time when they seemed to really need her but usually there was quite a bit of uncovered duck in their little sleeping area.
One day several weeks later I was feeding the hogs when one last indignity for this poor hen seemed to collapse what was left of her sanity. She was noticeably thinner and distraught by then, the constant disarray of her little flock steadily wearing her down. Our hogs had access to a creek that ran year round as a water source. Whenever we had to put one of the hogs up for farrowing (having baby pigs) I had to carry water from the creek to the farrowing house in five gallon buckets. It is quite a job to haul a couple of five gallon buckets of water the 75 yards from the creek to the farrowing house. As it happens, it was the dead of summer at the time and the sow needed a LOT of water in preparation for dropping her litter so I was making several trips a day to the creek.
On this particular day I was filling the buckets when I looked up to see the ducks waddling down through the hog pen. I think they were probably following me but then again, they could have just heard the creek running from some distance. At any rate, as I was filling the buckets and taking a short rest they made their way straight to the most rapid running part of the creek, the mother hen close behind. She was still clucking and crooning but as usual the ducks were simply ignoring her and going where they wanted.
As they got to the creek they immediately just jumped right in the water and began paddling around. They were ducks after all and they took to the water like; well…. like ducks take to water. As the last of them hit the water the hens clucking and crooning turned into panicked squawking. She ran up and down the creek bank squawking and flapping her wings in sheer terror. I am sure she thought her babies were going to their certain death. It had to be something of a mass suicide in her eyes and she was none too happy about it.
The ducks meanwhile were contentedly paddling around and occasionally diving their heads down in search of tadpoles and minnows, completely oblivious to their foster mother’s frantic attempts to get them to come out of the creek. I felt so sorry for her that I chased them out of the creek but they immediately went upstream and jumped back in. This set her off again like a fire alarm going off at full tilt. I felt sorry for her but there was really nothing I could do to stop the inevitable. They were ducks after all.
The mother hen was never quite the same after that. She followed them around for weeks but seemed kind of dazed and uncommitted. If the ducks ignoring her in the yard was shameful, them swimming in the creek every day after that was a horror along the lines of your kid joining the Hare Krishnas and selling flowers at the local airport. She continued to go through the motions of mothering the ducks until they just got too large to get under her at night but they still wanted to sleep near her. She never offered to set on eggs again. I guess that one experience at motherhood probably blunted that instinct forever.
I have thought about that poor hen at times in the process of raising children. I have often seen them doing things that I thought were intellectual suicide and then had a faint voice in the back of my mind remind me: they might be ducks. We aren’t meant to be carbon copies of each other and there is a wide range of individual activities that humans may need to be well adjusted.
4-H programs were quite prevalent in those days, especially at the rural schools levels. 4-H stands for head, heart, hands, and health. The organization is an outreach program that sponsors all manner of volunteer competition for rural kids. The local county fairs always had numerous contests covering everything from vegetables grown to livestock raised. It is still an active program. The last time I went to the local county fair I noticed there was a large metal building for the cooking and crop growing competitions along with the still existent barns for the livestock.
My sisters were all quite active in 4-H for many years, both in growing and showing livestock and some sampling of vegetable growing as well. My mother, as a school teacher was also one of the volunteer sponsors for the local 4-H so it was pretty much a part of my younger siblings lives the whole time they were growing up.
The incubator was probably their first adventure in that world and it was quite an adventure. The incubator was a round metallic structure about 12 inches tall and 30 inches in diameter. It contained a thermostat and heating element to keep the eggs within at a constant temperature during the incubation period before they hatched. For chickens, this period is a relatively short 21 days more or less. It is a little longer for ducks, usually another week or so.
The process is fairly simple, you take some fertilized new eggs and put in the incubator which controls the temperature to around 90 Degrees F. Our incubator also used water in the bottom of the pan to control humidity. It is not too hard to control the water level and humidity with a little practice and we had quite a high success rate. The eggs need to be turned regularly, we usually did this twice a day. The last piece of the puzzle is to try and avoid contaminating the shells with any foreign debris. We were very careful to handle them with gloves as we gathered them and turned them in the incubator.
We started out with eggs from our chickens but soon branched out to more exotic types of chickens. My sister’s loved the little Japanese silkies that have a kind of silky topknot on their head. We also had several of these types that have feathers sprout just above their feet so that they look like they are wearing feathery shoes. My oldest sister would put notices up at the Farmer’s Coop and feed stores in the area asking for eggs of all manner of chickens and ducks.
The end result of this was a yard full of exotic chickens by the time she got out of high school. The one rule my dad made was that we could not help any of them out of their shells. The chicks would usually peck a hole in the shell to breathe but it might take a whole day for them to get the strength to completely escape. It is a critical period for them and if they aren’t strong enough they sometimes never make it completely out. Naturally when the hatch date got close we anxiously peered through the little glass viewing lens in the top of the incubator, anxious to see how many would hatch.
I must admit that we weren’t always completely true to my dad’s rule. He never said anything but I know he was aware of it when we occasionally had a crippled chicken or duck hatch out. We once had a Peking duck with one foot that was balled up so that it limped continuously. It was the only duck that hatched out of the batch and I suspect he had some help in doing so. He lived for quite a while but never seemed to realize he was a duck as he hung around with the chicks he hatched with for his whole life.
During one incubation period of all ducks the heater element on the incubator failed. We were less than a week from their hatch date but they were not going to make it without the heater. My mom, ever the pragmatist, told us to take the duck eggs and put under a hen that was setting in the back of the hay shed beside the house. We took seven of the duck eggs and put under the hen who was sitting on two eggs at the time. She didn’t seem to mind the addition and seemed quite happy to have such a large brood of eggs to sit on.
The ducks began to hatch out right on time a week later. The hen didn’t seem to notice that the setting period was pretty short. She was quite proud of her little hatchlings, completely unaware that they were an entirely different species. The baby ducks didn’t seem to mind either as they happily got under her every night when it came time to go to roost. The daytime however, was a little less of a smooth transition for the hen.
Hens typically begin taking their chicks out to forage when they are very small, just a few days old. The mother hen will constantly cluck and “sing” to the chicks in a high pitched kind of crooning noise as they follow her around the yard. She will scratch and dig up seeds and small insects for them to eat, constantly communicating with them with her clucking and crooning. The clucking gets more staccato or rapid when she finds an especially tasty morsel for them and the chicks will react accordingly in a very short while, speeding up with the pace of her clucking or wandering slowly around with the smooth crooning. For a few days at least, the hen is forced to herd the chicks; keeping them in formation and gently pushing them in the right direction. Soon they are trained to follow her voice signals and she leads them proudly around the yard.
The ducks were not equipped with either the understanding of this language or simply an interest in being led around. I have since noticed the ducklings are usually simply herded around by their mothers but this little set of ducks seemed to largely ignore both her coaxing and her attempts to herd them in any direction. The upshot of this was that the poor hen was constantly running around behind them, clucking and crooning while they simply went wherever they wanted. Occasionally, she would manage to get ahead of them and show them a bug to eat but for the most part they simply ignored her until it came time to go to roost at night.
I imagine it was somewhat embarrassing for the hen to have children who so openly ignored her. I doubt it was something the other hens approved of the way she had to follow the ducks around instead of leading them. This seemed to put her on edge as she was quite frantic by the end of the day each day. She was only able to be comfortable when they got under her at night. The rest of the day she seemed distraught most of the time, no doubt a little ashamed that her brood was so unruly and disrespectful.
The ducks also grew at a high rate of speed so it wasn’t long at all before even this comfort was taken away from her. The sight of her trying to set on six ducks almost her own size at night was a little comical but I am sure it wasn’t for her. It was just one more failure in a long line of disappointing failures for her as a mother. They managed to somehow sleep under her for quite a while as it was the one time when they seemed to really need her but usually there was quite a bit of uncovered duck in their little sleeping area.
One day several weeks later I was feeding the hogs when one last indignity for this poor hen seemed to collapse what was left of her sanity. She was noticeably thinner and distraught by then, the constant disarray of her little flock steadily wearing her down. Our hogs had access to a creek that ran year round as a water source. Whenever we had to put one of the hogs up for farrowing (having baby pigs) I had to carry water from the creek to the farrowing house in five gallon buckets. It is quite a job to haul a couple of five gallon buckets of water the 75 yards from the creek to the farrowing house. As it happens, it was the dead of summer at the time and the sow needed a LOT of water in preparation for dropping her litter so I was making several trips a day to the creek.
On this particular day I was filling the buckets when I looked up to see the ducks waddling down through the hog pen. I think they were probably following me but then again, they could have just heard the creek running from some distance. At any rate, as I was filling the buckets and taking a short rest they made their way straight to the most rapid running part of the creek, the mother hen close behind. She was still clucking and crooning but as usual the ducks were simply ignoring her and going where they wanted.
As they got to the creek they immediately just jumped right in the water and began paddling around. They were ducks after all and they took to the water like; well…. like ducks take to water. As the last of them hit the water the hens clucking and crooning turned into panicked squawking. She ran up and down the creek bank squawking and flapping her wings in sheer terror. I am sure she thought her babies were going to their certain death. It had to be something of a mass suicide in her eyes and she was none too happy about it.
The ducks meanwhile were contentedly paddling around and occasionally diving their heads down in search of tadpoles and minnows, completely oblivious to their foster mother’s frantic attempts to get them to come out of the creek. I felt so sorry for her that I chased them out of the creek but they immediately went upstream and jumped back in. This set her off again like a fire alarm going off at full tilt. I felt sorry for her but there was really nothing I could do to stop the inevitable. They were ducks after all.
The mother hen was never quite the same after that. She followed them around for weeks but seemed kind of dazed and uncommitted. If the ducks ignoring her in the yard was shameful, them swimming in the creek every day after that was a horror along the lines of your kid joining the Hare Krishnas and selling flowers at the local airport. She continued to go through the motions of mothering the ducks until they just got too large to get under her at night but they still wanted to sleep near her. She never offered to set on eggs again. I guess that one experience at motherhood probably blunted that instinct forever.
I have thought about that poor hen at times in the process of raising children. I have often seen them doing things that I thought were intellectual suicide and then had a faint voice in the back of my mind remind me: they might be ducks. We aren’t meant to be carbon copies of each other and there is a wide range of individual activities that humans may need to be well adjusted.
Sunday, August 28, 2016
The Game Rooster
As time went on we had all manner of chickens at our place. They were my mother's special project so we had quite a mixture of them over the years. At one point, she discovered she could buy chicks through mail order. It was a little amazing but the US postal service delivered 100 baby chicks to her on a dusty Saturday afternoon. She had always wanted some Dominecker chickens but nobody local had any. Somehow she found this mail order business that sold them.
The chicks were only a couple of days old when we got them. I had moved out by then but had went home the weekend before to help dad redo one of the old sheds beside the garden to make it into a chicken house. Most of our chickens ran wild in the yard but these were going to be so small that he decided we needed to make them a house to roost in at night. We build a lot of perches just off the ground and put in a nice little water system with a trough in the middle of the house. We put some of the newest old tin we had taken from sheds we had torn down on the roof.
My dad had never seen fit to buy materials to build sheds. He just went on the local radio show that was in actuality a call-in yard sale show, where people offered up everything from tractors to livestock, and offered to remove sheds. What this actually meant was that we would tear down sheds and save the materials to build sheds on our place. My brother and I furnished the labor and we would make as many trips as we needed with the old Datsun stacked up to the top of its homemade sideboards with lumber and tin. This material was all piled up in a big open shed we had where we sorted it and finished removing all the nails. My dad had us straighten all the bent nails and soak them in an open half barrel of used motor oil. When we got ready to build something we used that material and even those nails. A nail soaked in oil goes into hardwood with a lot of ease.
My mother was quite pleased with her new chicken house and enclosed small area of chicken wire fencing. When the chicks arrived she took the box up to the "new" chicken house and turned them loose. I came over that night to look them over as they were something she was quite proud of. Dominecker chickens are black and gray mottled, with a very impressive pattern to their feathers. They are a little shorter and broader than the White Legguns and Rhode Island Reds we had when grown but these were very tiny and still almost black in color as they didn't even have feathers yet.
I am sure she had bargained to get a good price for them and she was very proud of how beautiful they were when they grew up. When they got large enough they had free rein of the yard with the other chickens but still slept in their own little chicken house. As in most bargains, there was a hitch to her plan. She didn't think about what the ratio of pullets to roosters that would come from a random sample of chicks. As it turned out it was about 60/40, pullets to roosters. It could have been worse but having forty young roosters around was problematic to say the least.
The old boss rooster just kind of gave up and trying to deal with that many competitors. They steered clear of him as he would flog any that got close enough but they soon learned to just give him a wide berth. The pullets weren't so lucky. One of the young roosters would get one of them pinned down and mount her and several others would line up. It was gang rape on a massive scale in the yard. The young pullets were so abused that many of them were losing the feathers on their back from the constant mounting.
Naturally, my mother wasn't too happy with this state of affairs. She would charge out into the yard with her broom and scatter young roosters like so many leaves in the wind. Woe be unto a rooster that didn't see her coming as it meant a good dusting and the feathers would fly. This led to multiple requests for chickens for the freezer and I spent a lot of evenings over there killing and cleaning young roosters. The old banty even lost interest in flogging the dead ones for a while, it was just too much work for him I suppose.
The young roosters soon wised up and I couldn't catch one most evenings. The sound of shelled corn in a coffee can could bring every chicken on the place running at our house but those young roosters were soon too wary to fall for that anymore. She even asked me if I could shoot them in the yard but I told her that wasn't a good idea either as the collateral damage might not be acceptable.
At that time, I was working in a factory that made sewing notions at night. It was a sweatshop factory but I was making decent money and going to electronics school in the daytime. I mentioned our problem with the roosters at work one night and one of my workmates told me he had a good solution for that particular problem. When I asked what it was, he said; "a game rooster."
I had heard of game roosters of course. Everyone who grew up in that area knew cockfighting was still a sport/gambling event that was played out at different venues in the area. It was illegal of course but I guess the sheriff's department had better things to do than to go arrest voters who contribute to campaigns every few years and they left it alone for the most part. At that time, I had not been to one but I knew what they were.
"How will that solve the problem," I asked. I knew they had a reputation for being extremely fierce but I also knew our old boss rooster hadn't done much to thin their population down.
"If you take a game rooster home, there won't be any rooster's around but him in just a short while," he assured me. He went on to explain that is why you have to keep them in seperate pens as they will kill any other chicken with a comb on it's head that gives it away as being a rooster. You can still see them today in some areas around here, lots of little small circular coops, each with a small house inside for the rooster. Most of the time, they are also tethered to keep them from flying out as they are also quite capable of flying for short distances.
He went on to explain that his brother "fed" roosters for several people who fought them in the area. "Feeding" game roosters involves a special mixture of grains, peppers, and proteins to get them in top shape. It also involves "training" them for endurance and strength. Every "feeder" has his own secret formulas and methods closely guarded and kept. The "feeders" also will handle them in the ring when they are pitted to fight for money.
I was a little skeptical but I called mother and asked her if she wanted a game rooster. When I explained what Phillip had told me, she paused a little but finally said if it would get rid of that gang of roosters she would be ok with it. She asked me if it would attack people and I told her that it would not, although I wasn't absolutely certain about that. I asked Phillip later that night and he told me that wouldn't bother people but would attack anything else that bothered their hens, including dogs, skunks, and raccoons.
The next night he brought me in a rooster that his brother had decided wasn't going to make a good fighting rooster; at least not for gambling on. The rooster was in a small crate. He was black with red feathers on his head and neck and some white feathers mixed in his tail feathers. He was a little bigger than the banty rooster we had but not as big as the boss rooster by a long shot. I did notice that his legs were heavily muscled, as if his drumsticks would be huge compared to the rest of his body. His spurs were just little nubs, not very sharp at all and very short.
I told Phillip that our boss rooster had huge spurs compared to these and he just laughed. He explained that game roosters don't really have spurs, that they are filed down if they do. When a game rooster fights in a pit they put gaffs on them. A gaff is a slender curved spike not much bigger around than a wire, about 2 inches long with a sharp point on the end. The gaff is attached to the roosters leg where their spurs should be. He told me that it was one way you could tell if a rooster was a pure game rooster. If he was pure game, he wouldn't try to kick the gaffs off like a regular rooster will. A game rooster instantly recognizes it is a weapon and actually gets excited when you put a pair of gaffs on him.
I still thought he was a little undersized to be something that was going to kill all the roosters on our place but Phillip just laughed again and told me not to worry. "Just take him home and put him in the yard. All your rooster problems will be over in just a little while after that."
When I got off work early the next morning, I took him home with me and put some water in his crate. The next morning I took him over to Mother's house. She was out feeding the chickens when I got there. She was very impressed with her new rooster. She told me he was beautiful. I had to admit he was pretty flamboyant looking with his black and bright red colors. I set his crate on the ground and opened the door.
He strutted around for a few seconds before he noticed one of the young roosters walking by and immediately started flogging him unmercifully. The rooster didn't have designs on being dominant so he was trying to just get away but the game rooster was faster and determined and soon chased him up the driveway towards the road. He probably would have chased him all the way across the road if the boss rooster hadn't seen what was going on and intervened.
As the boss rooster took a run at the game rooster he didn't even slow down; the game rooster just veered left and met him head on. They crouched once to jump but before the boss rooster could get off his feet the game rooster was bashing boths sides of his head at once. Every blow was perfectly timed to catch his head between those two strong legs as if in a rapidly slamming door. There was a sound to it that I have never forgotten. It sounded for all the world like a balled fist striking bare flesh. Pop, pop, pop, three rapidfire triphammer blows and the boss rooster went into convulsions, flopping helplessly on the gravel driveway. He never even got a chance to change his mind. He was dead before he knew what hit him.
The game rooster barely paused before taking off after another rooster he had spied watching. This one took off full speed with wings flapping and feet windmilling at a high rate of speed. It was pandemonium in the yard for a good fifteen minutes. The game rooster killed three roosters in that time and set the others heading across the road, up in the pasture and down through the garden as fast as they could go. It was the closest thing to the old tasmanian devil cartoons I had ever witnessed. He was literally a whirling dervish of destruction on anything that resembled a rooster.
Mother wasn't sure what to think. She asked me to pluck the dead roosters and bleed them out. She also suggested we probably should lock the banty in the barn for a while. It turned out that wasn't necessary. The banty seemed to know the game rooster wasn't something he wanted any part of. They lived in harmony for quite some time afterwards, the banty staying out of the yard and the game patrolling the yard and the garden.
Within 3 days there wasn't another rooster on our place. Most of them just left for better pastures but a couple flew in the dog pen with our beagles which was certain death for a chicken. Mother said they surely knew better than to get in the dog pen. I think they did it on purpose as it was preferrable to facing the game rooster.
For many years, we never had any roosters but the game rooster. He killed everything that hatched and grew a comb on its head. He also protected his hens with a ferocity that is hardly to be believed. One of our beagles got out and was chasing the chickens a few weeks later and he made a believer out of her. She ran halfway across the pasture to get away from him.
He lived a long and happy life there at our place. Mother always talked about how pretty he was but she never mentioned the fact that he was the most vicious killer I have ever seen. There is an old saying that nothing is as mean as a game rooster. I don't know of anything that is even a close second. God help us if they ever manage to put their genes in something larger.
The chicks were only a couple of days old when we got them. I had moved out by then but had went home the weekend before to help dad redo one of the old sheds beside the garden to make it into a chicken house. Most of our chickens ran wild in the yard but these were going to be so small that he decided we needed to make them a house to roost in at night. We build a lot of perches just off the ground and put in a nice little water system with a trough in the middle of the house. We put some of the newest old tin we had taken from sheds we had torn down on the roof.
My dad had never seen fit to buy materials to build sheds. He just went on the local radio show that was in actuality a call-in yard sale show, where people offered up everything from tractors to livestock, and offered to remove sheds. What this actually meant was that we would tear down sheds and save the materials to build sheds on our place. My brother and I furnished the labor and we would make as many trips as we needed with the old Datsun stacked up to the top of its homemade sideboards with lumber and tin. This material was all piled up in a big open shed we had where we sorted it and finished removing all the nails. My dad had us straighten all the bent nails and soak them in an open half barrel of used motor oil. When we got ready to build something we used that material and even those nails. A nail soaked in oil goes into hardwood with a lot of ease.
My mother was quite pleased with her new chicken house and enclosed small area of chicken wire fencing. When the chicks arrived she took the box up to the "new" chicken house and turned them loose. I came over that night to look them over as they were something she was quite proud of. Dominecker chickens are black and gray mottled, with a very impressive pattern to their feathers. They are a little shorter and broader than the White Legguns and Rhode Island Reds we had when grown but these were very tiny and still almost black in color as they didn't even have feathers yet.
I am sure she had bargained to get a good price for them and she was very proud of how beautiful they were when they grew up. When they got large enough they had free rein of the yard with the other chickens but still slept in their own little chicken house. As in most bargains, there was a hitch to her plan. She didn't think about what the ratio of pullets to roosters that would come from a random sample of chicks. As it turned out it was about 60/40, pullets to roosters. It could have been worse but having forty young roosters around was problematic to say the least.
The old boss rooster just kind of gave up and trying to deal with that many competitors. They steered clear of him as he would flog any that got close enough but they soon learned to just give him a wide berth. The pullets weren't so lucky. One of the young roosters would get one of them pinned down and mount her and several others would line up. It was gang rape on a massive scale in the yard. The young pullets were so abused that many of them were losing the feathers on their back from the constant mounting.
Naturally, my mother wasn't too happy with this state of affairs. She would charge out into the yard with her broom and scatter young roosters like so many leaves in the wind. Woe be unto a rooster that didn't see her coming as it meant a good dusting and the feathers would fly. This led to multiple requests for chickens for the freezer and I spent a lot of evenings over there killing and cleaning young roosters. The old banty even lost interest in flogging the dead ones for a while, it was just too much work for him I suppose.
The young roosters soon wised up and I couldn't catch one most evenings. The sound of shelled corn in a coffee can could bring every chicken on the place running at our house but those young roosters were soon too wary to fall for that anymore. She even asked me if I could shoot them in the yard but I told her that wasn't a good idea either as the collateral damage might not be acceptable.
At that time, I was working in a factory that made sewing notions at night. It was a sweatshop factory but I was making decent money and going to electronics school in the daytime. I mentioned our problem with the roosters at work one night and one of my workmates told me he had a good solution for that particular problem. When I asked what it was, he said; "a game rooster."
I had heard of game roosters of course. Everyone who grew up in that area knew cockfighting was still a sport/gambling event that was played out at different venues in the area. It was illegal of course but I guess the sheriff's department had better things to do than to go arrest voters who contribute to campaigns every few years and they left it alone for the most part. At that time, I had not been to one but I knew what they were.
"How will that solve the problem," I asked. I knew they had a reputation for being extremely fierce but I also knew our old boss rooster hadn't done much to thin their population down.
"If you take a game rooster home, there won't be any rooster's around but him in just a short while," he assured me. He went on to explain that is why you have to keep them in seperate pens as they will kill any other chicken with a comb on it's head that gives it away as being a rooster. You can still see them today in some areas around here, lots of little small circular coops, each with a small house inside for the rooster. Most of the time, they are also tethered to keep them from flying out as they are also quite capable of flying for short distances.
He went on to explain that his brother "fed" roosters for several people who fought them in the area. "Feeding" game roosters involves a special mixture of grains, peppers, and proteins to get them in top shape. It also involves "training" them for endurance and strength. Every "feeder" has his own secret formulas and methods closely guarded and kept. The "feeders" also will handle them in the ring when they are pitted to fight for money.
I was a little skeptical but I called mother and asked her if she wanted a game rooster. When I explained what Phillip had told me, she paused a little but finally said if it would get rid of that gang of roosters she would be ok with it. She asked me if it would attack people and I told her that it would not, although I wasn't absolutely certain about that. I asked Phillip later that night and he told me that wouldn't bother people but would attack anything else that bothered their hens, including dogs, skunks, and raccoons.
The next night he brought me in a rooster that his brother had decided wasn't going to make a good fighting rooster; at least not for gambling on. The rooster was in a small crate. He was black with red feathers on his head and neck and some white feathers mixed in his tail feathers. He was a little bigger than the banty rooster we had but not as big as the boss rooster by a long shot. I did notice that his legs were heavily muscled, as if his drumsticks would be huge compared to the rest of his body. His spurs were just little nubs, not very sharp at all and very short.
I told Phillip that our boss rooster had huge spurs compared to these and he just laughed. He explained that game roosters don't really have spurs, that they are filed down if they do. When a game rooster fights in a pit they put gaffs on them. A gaff is a slender curved spike not much bigger around than a wire, about 2 inches long with a sharp point on the end. The gaff is attached to the roosters leg where their spurs should be. He told me that it was one way you could tell if a rooster was a pure game rooster. If he was pure game, he wouldn't try to kick the gaffs off like a regular rooster will. A game rooster instantly recognizes it is a weapon and actually gets excited when you put a pair of gaffs on him.
I still thought he was a little undersized to be something that was going to kill all the roosters on our place but Phillip just laughed again and told me not to worry. "Just take him home and put him in the yard. All your rooster problems will be over in just a little while after that."
When I got off work early the next morning, I took him home with me and put some water in his crate. The next morning I took him over to Mother's house. She was out feeding the chickens when I got there. She was very impressed with her new rooster. She told me he was beautiful. I had to admit he was pretty flamboyant looking with his black and bright red colors. I set his crate on the ground and opened the door.
He strutted around for a few seconds before he noticed one of the young roosters walking by and immediately started flogging him unmercifully. The rooster didn't have designs on being dominant so he was trying to just get away but the game rooster was faster and determined and soon chased him up the driveway towards the road. He probably would have chased him all the way across the road if the boss rooster hadn't seen what was going on and intervened.
As the boss rooster took a run at the game rooster he didn't even slow down; the game rooster just veered left and met him head on. They crouched once to jump but before the boss rooster could get off his feet the game rooster was bashing boths sides of his head at once. Every blow was perfectly timed to catch his head between those two strong legs as if in a rapidly slamming door. There was a sound to it that I have never forgotten. It sounded for all the world like a balled fist striking bare flesh. Pop, pop, pop, three rapidfire triphammer blows and the boss rooster went into convulsions, flopping helplessly on the gravel driveway. He never even got a chance to change his mind. He was dead before he knew what hit him.
The game rooster barely paused before taking off after another rooster he had spied watching. This one took off full speed with wings flapping and feet windmilling at a high rate of speed. It was pandemonium in the yard for a good fifteen minutes. The game rooster killed three roosters in that time and set the others heading across the road, up in the pasture and down through the garden as fast as they could go. It was the closest thing to the old tasmanian devil cartoons I had ever witnessed. He was literally a whirling dervish of destruction on anything that resembled a rooster.
Mother wasn't sure what to think. She asked me to pluck the dead roosters and bleed them out. She also suggested we probably should lock the banty in the barn for a while. It turned out that wasn't necessary. The banty seemed to know the game rooster wasn't something he wanted any part of. They lived in harmony for quite some time afterwards, the banty staying out of the yard and the game patrolling the yard and the garden.
Within 3 days there wasn't another rooster on our place. Most of them just left for better pastures but a couple flew in the dog pen with our beagles which was certain death for a chicken. Mother said they surely knew better than to get in the dog pen. I think they did it on purpose as it was preferrable to facing the game rooster.
For many years, we never had any roosters but the game rooster. He killed everything that hatched and grew a comb on its head. He also protected his hens with a ferocity that is hardly to be believed. One of our beagles got out and was chasing the chickens a few weeks later and he made a believer out of her. She ran halfway across the pasture to get away from him.
He lived a long and happy life there at our place. Mother always talked about how pretty he was but she never mentioned the fact that he was the most vicious killer I have ever seen. There is an old saying that nothing is as mean as a game rooster. I don't know of anything that is even a close second. God help us if they ever manage to put their genes in something larger.
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