Morning everyone
Been a while since I have been on here. The birds have been keeping us busy this winter. The littles are all grown up now and the young rooster has inally learned he is a boy. Had some hens get really bad cuts on their backsides due to the roosters nails. Not impressed at all.............. we tried clipping the very tip of the young roos nail off and it bled. Then we tried filing and it bled too. Dulling his nails is not an option at this point and the saddles we ordered for the hens do not cover the back of their "thighs" near their tail base, which is where we are seeing damage to them. The roo has 10 hens and it seems all but 3 have really bad feather damage (on wings and backs) I am continually checking for severe damage on them. This marans roo still has yet to grow on me- and this damage to the hens is really getting old. He has not aggressively attacked me yet either, but I know the day is coming. He is not a bird you turn your back to if you are wrestling a hen to check her. On a side note- he has filled in as a lovely bird. Very proud looking. Not as much heft as I figured he would have, but he is still very young. His tail seems high- but I feel that his strutting around has a lot to do with that. He holds his head very high, prancing around like a stallion horse lol. The ladies are all producing eggs now. The two youngest ladies have some interesting eggs..... sometimes it seems like the "ink jet" shut off and the eggs come out super pale. One is nice and smooth and the other is rough as sandpaper. Funny how they differ so much compared to the eggs they hatched out of lol. But I am still loving the contrasting colors marans provide in the pen and in the egg carton. People who we sell eggs to, love them.
... He is the love of my life, he came from setter rescue saveoursetters.org.
