SnowHunter, my breeding pens should be set up sometime around then too... like you said, it's just a matter of getting off my duff and actually
doing it!
Speaking of... I don't know what I'm going to do with my cockerels. Claude is a determined fence jumper, I guess for some reason he wants to be where Stewart's at too. Even though they both know they can't get along. Well when I got home everyone was fine and dandy, in their respective runs where they should be. I go outside just now to lock up for the night and what do I find? Stewart in the layer's run, where Claude usually is and Claude in the "teenager's" run where Stewart typically calls home. To top it all off, Stewarts face is covered in blood!
My best guess is that Claude jumped over the fence to get at Stewart's women, and Stewart wasn't having it so they started quarreling. Well it's not really fair considering Claude has NO wattles or hardly any comb to pull at when in a tussel (he's a BW Ameraucana) but boy does Stewart have a face full! I guess Claude grabbed on extra hard tonight and ripped open Stewart's left wattle, leaving his face and chest covered with blood.
Stewart must have lost this battle and jumped the fence to get away from Claude, which is a surprise to me because Stewart's getting to be a big boy, I didn't know he had the ability to scale a 8ft fence.
So I don't know what I'm going to do now. Is it my fault? They're separated only by a fence that's in the middle of the two runs, would this cause constant sparring between the two? I wonder if I removed a section of the fence and turned the run into one large area if someone would finally back down and the other could establish total dominance over the flock. I'm getting tired of having to wash blood out of Stewart's feathers, it leaves him dingy looking.
Not to mention that he's now got blue splotches on his head and hackles due to the Blu-Kote that I used on his wattles. I don't think it's entirely Claude's fault though, he's not overly aggressive, I think he's just always trying to one up Stewart and then the fight is on.
I wonder if clipping Claude's flight feathers would keep him on his side of the fence? I honestly don't think I could part with either of the boys at this point, so I'm just going to have to figure something out to settle them both down...
