Keeper of the Winlock Chickens

For a clue to the age old conundrum of, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” we can take a cue from the South Lewis County burg of Winlock.

Winlock is a town that was long ago made famous by eggs. As most Lewis County residents know, during the 1920s Winlock farmers shipped more than a quarter-million cases of eggs each year. 

Times have often been lean since the town’s heyday, but each summer, fun-loving folks still come from miles around to celebrate Egg Days in the city’s quaint center. Some folks still fondly refer to the community as Egg Town.

Of course, prized poultry requires a good steward in order to remain in tip-top shape. Where farmers used to do that work, today it’s Jeanie Emmenegger who is making sure the chickens get their due.

These days, though, the real eggs are sparse around town because Winlock’s most famous chickens are roosters instead of hens. 

The birds are also 5 feet tall, and sometimes they come in a smattering of colors seemingly swiped straight from Willy Wonka’s dreams.

Beyond sex and size, the other notable difference in the chickens is that they are statues. As a result, Emmenegger, an engaging woman with a serendipitous surname, doesn’t have to feed the chickens or muck their coop. Instead, she just paints them. It is a curious form of animal husbandry indeed.

Emmenegger, who makes her nest on the outskirts of Winlock and acts as president of the Winlock Lions Club, says she has been painting the eye-catching cocks in the downtown core for the past seven or eight years. In total, there are eight of the ornamental birds in the flock. That doesn’t even include the World’s Largest Egg, which Emmenegger works on in conjunction with a Winlock Elementary school class.

You could call it a pet project.

A menagerie of renegade rooster statues can also be seen decorating the yards of private residences around the greater-Winlock area, but those birds are not part of Emmenegger’s flock. One of the boldest of the rural roosters is painted in large bright swatches of red and yellow, and can be found on South Military Road.

“That one’s quite attractive,” said Emmenegger. “It’s out in the open but you’ve really got to be looking for it to catch it.”

As Emmenegger remembers it, the downtown roosters were ordered and delivered in a single clutch “about a decade ago.” Herding chickens is never easy and the overgrown inanimate variety is apparently no different. According to Emmenegger, situating the roosters onto their hefty cement foundations was by far the hardest part of the process.

But that task came with the perk of being a one-time job. The maintenance is a different story altogether, one of a never ending variety.

“I try to work on them all a couple times a year, especially in the summer time before the rains come,” explained Emmenegger, The Poultry Picasso, as she painted away on a late August day. “I try to get all my other work done so I can do this.”

Sometimes glossy photographs of her slick painted roosters pop up in tourist periodicals or wind up gracing the front of collectible postcards. When Emmenegger’s friends see the photographs, they snatch them up and give them to her. She says that it gives her “quite a thrill” to see Winlock’s birds in the spotlight.

“I know we have lots of visitors stop and see them. That and the big egg,” said Emmenegger. “So it’s kind of a fun thing.”

While the most of the downtown flock belongs to the Lions Club, Emmenegger herself owns the frequently flamboyant rooster (seen in the photograph) that stands at the corner of Walnut Street and Kerron Street near the main railroad crossing.

Although Emmenegger possesses a flair for the dramatic that she gleefully passed on to her vibrantly colored roosters, she makes sure that there are still a few traditionally colored white leghorns situated around Egg Town too. It is her way of paying homage to Winlock’s Grade A past.

“Of course leghorns, and their eggs, built this town,” proudly noted Emmenegger. “Egg Days is still a big day for us.”

Through her work Emmenegger has learned firsthand that her fellow Winlock residents take their chickens quite seriously. 

Once while Emmenegger was putting the finishing flourishes on a downtown rooster, a woman pulled up alongside her in a car and proceeded to dole out an unsolicited sermon on the virtues of realistic looking giant chicken statues. 

The angry lady’s tirade colorfully highlighted the fact that the freshly painted chicken, “didn’t look like her rooster.” 

The drive-by squawker then challenged Emmenegger to get in the car so she could go, “see what a real rooster looks like.”

Emmenegger politely declined the offer.

Despite the inescapable tribulations of an inanimate chicken farmer, Emmenegger insists that she loves taking care of the birds.

“The roosters just came into play and I’ve been their caretaker ever since. I just enjoy it immensely,” explained Emmenegger. “And they don’t each much so they’re pretty inexpensive.”

In a normal year Emmenegger says she works for at least three weeks straight painting the roosters. She also pays for all of the supplies out of pocket. “It’s easier that way and nobody can complain about the colors I choose,” laughed Emmenegger.

There is one rooster in the bunch that elicits a lot of curious looks, and not because of a unique paint job. The leghorn roo at the corner of Walnut Street and First Street is sitting in a laying box, and as any dyed in the wool Winlockian can tell you, roosters don’t lay eggs.

As it happens, the birds legs were broken in a senseless act of inanimate animal cruelty (see: Vandalism), so the box is actually a makeshift perch. A throne, if you will, for the king of alter-abled fowl.

For her part, Emmenegger takes the gender bending rooster and malicious mischief in stride, saying, “Luckily we haven’t had anything like that happen before.” She also wisely pointed out that, “Of course roosters don’t sit in boxes. But they might if they had broken legs.”

Welcome to Winlock; A place first made famous for eggs, and then again by their giant chickens of a different color.

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Jordan Nailon is a freelancer and outdoors writer for The Chronicle. Send tips and comments to jnailon@hotmail.com.