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- #161
- May 21, 2017
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I am not sure if I am posting this correctly or even in the right place so please forgive me if I have it all wrong.
So what had happened was.......I went to Ace Hardware on mothers day to pick up a plumbing part for my husband and came with 3 little "Meep meeps" what we call the baby chickens because they sound like little meep noises and we are clueless. one died after day 2 and the other two have turned out to be roosters. I cried my heart out at the first one being a rooster and hoped and hoped that the other one would be a hen because I thought I would have to get rid of them. This morning we had a little crow off confirming my awaiting second heartache.
Now I read that I can keep them even though they are both roosters maybe.... They do not like to be separated at all, they will squawk if one of them is out of the pen area or being held and the other isn't. They cuddle up under each other and sit/lay down together all the time too but they also do the bump chest thing and goose each other as well as try to jump on top of each other. Their neck feathers stand up and one of them tends to peck on the top of the head but not hard or too hard from what I can tell. One of them always runs off, the other chases they change positions on this and then they get sidetracked.
We were thinking we needed to get some hens and couldn't keep them both but we would be happiest if we could just keep them both and not get any hens at this point as we didn't get them for eggs. I didn't even know there were so many different kinds of chickens. The ones we have are silkies although I do not know if they are full silkie or have been breed with another breed or how to tell that.
I am painting their chicken coop now and making a more permanent area for them. I would appreciate any information I can get on what I need to do or make sure I have as I set it up for them as well as what I need to look for to know if they will not be ok to stay together. We did make them a little portable house that they go into in the evening and that comes in the house at night and we take them back out in the morning. Also do Roosters take dust baths or just hens?
Usually roosters that grow up together get along better, but not always. Sometimes having only 2 roosters can cause them to fight too much, so if they start drawing blood you might want to get a third silkie that's the same age. Roosters do dust bathe, Iv'e seen mine do it lots of times.