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blackacres
Wrangler of the Tiny Raptors
Part 7 - Selecting the keepers, rehoming, and adding more. The start of my Chicken Math.
This part was both easy and hard at the same time. My beloved sexed Wyandotte pullets were not actually pullets. The Lavender Orpington finally grew out enough to realize that it was also a cockerel. So there’s way too many cocks in the hen house. Boots (dark Brahma) had already begun to prove he was going to be a good cockerel to keep. He’s always on high alert, rounds everyone up at bedtime and doesn’t go in himself until he’s checked the run for stragglers. I knew I wanted to keep him. So I removed the other three from the flock and sent them to new homes.
And then my friend called; again. She has 4 birds she needs to place as her full sized flock is not accepting them. All of mine had originally been brooded with the ones she wanted me to take so I obliged. Again, I loaded up my pet carrier and went to retrieve some chickens. This time, I came home with a Salmon Favorelles cockerel, a black Showgirl, and two frizzled Silkies. I didn’t want another cockerel as I’d just rid of three, but he was so sweet and loving. He and Boots worked out the new pecking order very quickly so all is well there. But they were rapidly approaching the hormonal stage so I knew I needed more pullets ASAP. I added 3 Marans and 6 RIRs. I still believe I need more, but this should get us through the winter.
Next issue at hand. The bigs have a large size difference from the bantys now and I was worried they would be picked on or injured. I put on my best attitude and approached my husband to request his skill at sectioning off part of the run and coop for the bantys. He just shook his head and said show me what you’re thinking. By the end of the day, this is what he completed.
We then moved inside the coop to segregate the area under the poop board to become the banty coop. First we had to give them a roosting bar and mount their heat plate.
The next and final step to this arrangement was simply to close it off from the bigs. That was done by simply adding some tin from the bottom of the poop tray to the floor.
The bigs and the littles were successfully separated on November 7, 2021 and it has worked wonderfully to ease my mind.
This part was both easy and hard at the same time. My beloved sexed Wyandotte pullets were not actually pullets. The Lavender Orpington finally grew out enough to realize that it was also a cockerel. So there’s way too many cocks in the hen house. Boots (dark Brahma) had already begun to prove he was going to be a good cockerel to keep. He’s always on high alert, rounds everyone up at bedtime and doesn’t go in himself until he’s checked the run for stragglers. I knew I wanted to keep him. So I removed the other three from the flock and sent them to new homes.
And then my friend called; again. She has 4 birds she needs to place as her full sized flock is not accepting them. All of mine had originally been brooded with the ones she wanted me to take so I obliged. Again, I loaded up my pet carrier and went to retrieve some chickens. This time, I came home with a Salmon Favorelles cockerel, a black Showgirl, and two frizzled Silkies. I didn’t want another cockerel as I’d just rid of three, but he was so sweet and loving. He and Boots worked out the new pecking order very quickly so all is well there. But they were rapidly approaching the hormonal stage so I knew I needed more pullets ASAP. I added 3 Marans and 6 RIRs. I still believe I need more, but this should get us through the winter.
Next issue at hand. The bigs have a large size difference from the bantys now and I was worried they would be picked on or injured. I put on my best attitude and approached my husband to request his skill at sectioning off part of the run and coop for the bantys. He just shook his head and said show me what you’re thinking. By the end of the day, this is what he completed.
We then moved inside the coop to segregate the area under the poop board to become the banty coop. First we had to give them a roosting bar and mount their heat plate.
The next and final step to this arrangement was simply to close it off from the bigs. That was done by simply adding some tin from the bottom of the poop tray to the floor.
The bigs and the littles were successfully separated on November 7, 2021 and it has worked wonderfully to ease my mind.
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Shhh. The husband has no idea they’re coming. Okay, that is only partly true. He knows I want them, he knows I’ve been researching them. He knows I’ve been acquiring a set up for them.The part he doesn’t know is that they’ve already been paid for and are flying to our coop in less than a month. I’m beyond excited to start my adventure with Seramas. I’m breeding for SOP because I want to enter shows. You probably noticed the title of my thread is “The chickens that saved me.” I’ll go into that a bit now
He is a Salmon Favorelles. He’s pretty laid back. Love to be petted and hang out in my lap. 
