How to protect Lucille from Earl [updated, semi graphic pic]

[pixiechic]

Earl went after my DH again yesterday and gave him a good scratch, so we thought we'd try giving Earl a little more space to see if it mellowed him out at all. Today, we kicked him (well, nudged him with a stick) out of the pen and into the 130' x 70' fenced yard. We made sure he had plenty of food and water and pretty much left him alone all day, but checked on him periodically.

He's such a large bird that I suspected he wouldn't wander far, and that turned out to be true. A couple of times I saw him right next to Lucille, on the other side of the fence, but later he'd ventured maybe 15 feet from the pen. When it was time to go back in at dusk, he was pretty easy to coax back into the pen, and didn't try to strike at DH at all. Maybe giving him something to do besides pounce on Lucille all day long is a good thing, and Lucille didn't seem particularly upset that her man was outside.

FWIW, the general consensus here is that they are cornish crosses. I know some say meat birds don't breed, but Lucille is actively squatting for Earl now, and she laid her first egg yesterday. It was broken when we found it, and soft-shelled, so we picked up some oyster shell today, but maybe we will get a few eggs out of her yet. They are both panting a lot in this heat, even though they have plenty of shade. I honestly wonder if they will survive the summer, but I'd like to make their chicken lives happy while they're here.

 

[lovethechickens]

Oh my goodness! They are beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[pixiechic]

Update on the situation:

Shortly after I last posted about this, Earl mauled Lucille very badly, over the course of just one night -- before we even had time to make her an apron. We decided that we couldn’t keep them together at all any more. He’s not malicious towards her, he just can’t stop trying to mate with her, and he’s so huge that his claws simply ripped the skin on her back to shreds. The dark stuff in the pic of Lucille is purple veterinary germicide, which we applied every few days until it scabbed over well.

We started keeping Earl outside in the fenced area overnight, and he had a little shelter under a pallet propped up against the small coop where Lucille sleeps. However…Earl’s personality got increasingly aggressive. My son (a big 6' tall teenager) refused to feed him any more. He came after me for the third time one weekend while we were working on the fence, and I was so tempted to turn him into dinner that I literally had him in the scope of my .22 rifle. Maybe it sounds mean, but I can’t have a rooster that I can’t turn my back on. But DH (the only person Earl doesn’t attack) talked me into sparing Earl’s life, even though we’d never be able to let him near any of the other chickens, nor any humans for that matter.

Last weekend, natural selection answered that question for us — a predator got into the pen and killed Earl. From the pile of feathers scattered about, it looks like he put up a pretty good fight, and he may have thought he was defending his lady, even though she was safely closed inside her coop. Our fence is pretty sturdy, but at 4-5 feet high, a coyote could easily jump over. What a coyote apparently can’t do, however, is jump back over the fence carrying a giant 20-pound chicken. We found Earl in the morning, in a corner next to the fence, minus his head. It solved a problem for us, but we were both a little sad to see him go that way. I'm sorry that we couldn't find a way to keep them apart but both safe.

The good news is that Lucille seems much happier and more relaxed now. She is very docile and sweet, is healing up nicely, and she even laid her first real hard-shelled egg the other day.

 

[MrsChickendad]

I know they a.i. domestic turkey's because they're too big to do the deed.


Watch out for a "Dirty Jobs" segment where Mike Rowe went to a turkey farm to do a.i. It is hysterically funny. They will probably rerun in several times on Discovery channel.