Good morning
and thank you all!
What I love the most about Mr Marans is he is a very reasonable and respectful boy. Which is important in such close quarters for working around him. This morning, of everyone, Sammy was a challenge... and by the looks of the spurs he’s growing, I’m going to be watching him
quite closely. Yesterday he was fine, and I introduced Hoppy into the hospital pen, without much trouble.
I spent a lot of the afternoon and evening supervising Hoppy to make sure she was doing ok with the much bigger Puffy and Bossy, and that Sammy wasn’t being too overwhelming in his affections. Basically, I spent a lot of time right at or half in the door to the run. Today when I opened the box up Sammy came out hot and bit my arm, then proceeded to try to flog it, and bite some more. A lot. Hopefully this was a one off, due to the changes in the coop dynamics, but I’ll be watching him closely. He has a bad wheeze when he exerts himself, I
think from a squabble in the cockerel pen when he was younger, and I’m not
sure I want to breed him. If he gets violent his days will be numbered, last Sapphire boy standing or not.
Today is putting the sides on our Flat Deck, recycling day, fence repairs, and then moving day for the chicks. I also plan on leg banding them to identify the females I’m most interested in keeping when I move them. I had nightmares about that last night, I asked for help but instead of moving them our helpers processed all but 5. At 2lbs. Oh, the wierd stuff I dream about now!
Andrew recently ran into the guy we sold one of our “extra” Barnvelder cockerels to, and we are happy to report that he is doing very well for himself! The new owner was quite shocked as he’s never had a Rooster that strutted around so much! He’s quite the ladies man, and so far no one else had been eaten by anything, so he’s doing his “job” of protecting the flock... of course how much of that is him, and how much is chance/luck is debatable. But hey, he’s got a good home and plenty of GF’s!
aka: oops!
