The old boys are going on three this year, and are doing great. They are just recovering from their annual molting and it was not pretty. They looked naked with silvery spikes covering them, old feathers flying everywhere. The girls that arrived this spring, are now down at the barn so the fellas are lonely. When the girls arrived they came in a box of 25 chicks, you can request hens, but there is no firm guarantee that's what you will get. I did have one lone rooster in the bunch. At about eight weeks, eight of the hens and one rooster headed up to a friends home. They did great until the flooding on the front range occurred. Our friend's home was flooded. The Chickens survived but the rooster, Roy, came out of the tragedy not himself and started getting rather defensive of the coop. With two little ones in the family who love to collect eggs, that just was not going to work. So Roy came back home.
He has been here for about a week getting to know the other roosters through a fence. It appeared all was going well, but not ever going through the experience of adding a Rooster to the flock, my timing was off. Sunday afternoon Roy was released out with the boys.
It went well at first, all scurried off, the old boys showing the way. First stop the bird seed for the wild birds, they need to clean that up daily! Keeping a close eye on them and my broom at the ready (it's a great separator doing so gently and giving me some distance), suddenly two were missing...
... once found the broom came to the rescue, and dear Roy was separated from Nod, both were ok. Roy is now back in his coop watching the boys from a distance. I think more time might be needed, maybe they may never be out together but right now that is my hope, that all four can range free.
To finding common ground, and realizing it might take some time....
~ Deb
* Last time in Barn Stories: Spooky Morning
