I am feeling almost normal again this morning. Was some pretty rough food poisoning, the dehydration seemed to be the worse of it. Thanks for asking.
Following Oz's advise I read the girls the riot act verbatim yesterday, but it may have lacked the required conviction given my illness. It did not work yesterday. Today we have some great weather, so maybe today. Alicia seems confident that today is the day. I'm not so confident.
We seem to be the laughing stock of the locals lol (and probably here too hahaha) So many chickens, and so few eggs. We got given what I call a dozen 'sympathy eggs' from some friends lol, and last night we were offered more from another family. Was funny to watch unfold as the wife knew we weren't getting anything, the husband had no idea. The husband was explaining "we get so many every day that we can't hold them in our hands, we have to take a carton down or get the kids to help" meanwhile the wife is making all sorts of signs to stop hahahaha Like I might actually find it offensive or something lol Ended with being offered to take some of their eggs home and an apology for being 'insensitive' I had to laugh at that. I wanted to know how many, what colour and size they were getting. I am in patient for ours, not delicate about others hahahaha.
Moving on, we have decided to process another rooster. We currently have two, Barney the BV and Smudge the Ara. Smudge is well coloured and the active alpha. Good to carry and 'doing his job' but he is incredibly loud. He has a very full crow. Barney on the other hand is bigger and looking very nice (apart from a little crooked toe) but he is not yet covering any of the girls, and even though he is bigger than Smudge he is very submissive. He is awkward to carry, sometimes kicks a foot out and claws me, or gets a wing loose. His crow is not very loud.
During the night the crowing is not such an issue, they are in the box and it is very muffled, but when we let them out they get into crow off's. One goes, then the other and on and on it goes. I fear we are on limited complaint time with the two going off like clockwork. I am hoping that is we reduce out numbers we can reduce the crowing by better than 50%, and hopefully buy a little more time.
I will get a few pictures today, a shame as he is a good looking fellow, but Barney has been selected for roasting duties.