thebulg
Chirping
We have an initial flock of 4 girls and 1 boy. We added what we thought were 2 more girls, but i found one mounting a lady from the first flock, and this morning either a friendly neighbir was crowing at our yard, or the young roo has begun exercising his vocal chords.
Rooster 1 is a lavendar orp. He's a year old, he is not very matey- he normally gets the girls once a day or once every other day. He crows maybe one set every 2 hours? He's a really chill rooster. And huge and beautiful. Not friendly, not aggressive. A good watchman. The cons to him is that he really is huge, and our other girls are small. So just the act of him mating our ameraucana could tear her up. Their coop is about 20 feet from our neighbor's house, so his morning crowing gives me a bit of a guilt complex. They've never complained to us about it.
Rooster 2 is 5 months old and is a frizzled olive egger. Let's just establish this now, he's gorgeous. I mean gorgeous. He is friendly to me, and him and the ameraucana live in their own coop right next to our house, a good 70 feet or more from a neighbor. Taking him out leaves the ameraucana alone. The con to him is that he is a wild card. We will have to keep 2 roosters to find out if he is very loud or very sexual. If he's relatively calm toward the girls, then i think he's our better choice. He is smaller as well.
Neither of the boys can fly- roo1 is too fat, roo 2 can't with the frizzled feathers. So the girls are all able to fly over the fence and go forage in the front yard to get away from the boys.
Decisions, decisions!!!
Rooster 1 is a lavendar orp. He's a year old, he is not very matey- he normally gets the girls once a day or once every other day. He crows maybe one set every 2 hours? He's a really chill rooster. And huge and beautiful. Not friendly, not aggressive. A good watchman. The cons to him is that he really is huge, and our other girls are small. So just the act of him mating our ameraucana could tear her up. Their coop is about 20 feet from our neighbor's house, so his morning crowing gives me a bit of a guilt complex. They've never complained to us about it.
Rooster 2 is 5 months old and is a frizzled olive egger. Let's just establish this now, he's gorgeous. I mean gorgeous. He is friendly to me, and him and the ameraucana live in their own coop right next to our house, a good 70 feet or more from a neighbor. Taking him out leaves the ameraucana alone. The con to him is that he is a wild card. We will have to keep 2 roosters to find out if he is very loud or very sexual. If he's relatively calm toward the girls, then i think he's our better choice. He is smaller as well.
Neither of the boys can fly- roo1 is too fat, roo 2 can't with the frizzled feathers. So the girls are all able to fly over the fence and go forage in the front yard to get away from the boys.
Decisions, decisions!!!
i think we need to give it a few more weeks, or months if we can manage. I found one of our rhode island reds in the nest box and her feather situation is a little worse than i thought. Not bare anywhere, but she's got a potato size area of exposed down feather on both sides. A medium potato, good for a child haha. So it will just come down to whichever happens first: the hens losing too many feathers, or the second roo showing signs of aggression or excessive sexual prowess!
