The Evolution of Atlas: A Breeding (and Chat) Thread

[speckledhen]

I was thinking the same thing.

I'm glad you got everyone moved to their own places now. Hopefully the dust will settle now.

He is so gorgeous. One thing I look for, and you'll think I'm odd, but Ladyhawk has seen it, too, is the look in the eyes. When my BR rooster, Dutch, decided I was his enemy during a time he had to be separated from his hens for two or three weeks, his expression changed from soft to "you just wait, lady, I'll get you when you least expect it". You could see a hardness in his eyes. Ladyhawk saw it, too. I don't see that with Atlas at all and neither does she. If that changes, I'll be heartbroken. I want him to be an exemplary rooster just as his grandpa Isaac and his sire, Rex, are, even if he has to go elsewhere. He has it in his DNA to be a great one.

 

[Happy Chooks]

I understand the look in the eyes. I had an olive egger male that flogged me multiple times before I got wise. He would look at me when I came into the run like "game on". He hit me once at hip level, and I'm 5'8" tall. Another time, he broke a vein in my leg through my jeans, and left me with a softball size bruise. The strange thing was that he was fine with my DH, my kids, and strangers. I tried everything suggested to "reform him" and it didn't help in the least. It was just me he was after for some particular reason. I never did figure out why, but the day I was bent over filling a waterer and he went for my head, he was gone.

 

[speckledhen]

I understand the look in the eyes. I had an olive egger male that flogged me multiple times before I got wise. He would look at me when I came into the run like "game on". He hit me once at hip level, and I'm 5'8" tall. Another time, he broke a vein in my leg through my jeans, and left me with a softball size bruise. The strange thing was that he was fine with my DH, my kids, and strangers. I tried everything suggested to "reform him" and it didn't help in the least. It was just me he was after for some particular reason. I never did figure out why, but the day I was bent over filling a waterer and he went for my head, he was gone.

Sometimes, you just never know what's in their little walnut-size brains. Same thing happened to Ladyhawk not long ago. Hit her on the side of the head and he was gone. She'd given him every chance and he was a sweet cockerel, but after a raccoon attack in an adjoining section of the coop, she moved him and his two pullets to their own small coop and in a day or two, he turned aggressive. Something in him just snapped and he became a crazed lunatic. Hard to know what happens to them sometimes. But, the result is you have a dangerous large male who can't stay.

 

[drumstick diva]

If Ladyhawk and her daughter can't tame them - nobody can.

 

[speckledhen]

If Ladyhawk and her daughter can't tame them - nobody can.

Break out the lavender bubble bath!!!

 

[speckledhen]

Because a necropsied hen tested positive for two types of worms, though every flock was wormed back in May, I changed wormers and re-did everyone today with it. Will use a different, more expensive, even better one when we can afford to get it. I'm very limited on budget. Its all we can do to buy feed and shavings or I'd already have purchased the other.

Never wormed a chicken under a year old, but I decided to worm Atlas and his two pullets as well as everyone else. I distracted him by putting some scratch on the step of the short ladder roost and then just reached over and picked him up. That boy did not struggle at all, was sweet as could be, didn't even protest when DH opened his beak for the wormer. I was so proud of him. He was probably the easiest of all of them to treat.

Here's the only picture from today, his 25 week one. It was windy and cold and we have our first freeze warning so we were busy readying coops and doing other work.

 

[drumstick diva]

Is this early for a freeze warning in Georgia? We are having one tomorrow but, we are always much colder than Georgia. I have a friend in Tucker, and it seems to be hot (next to us) all the time.

 

[speckledhen]

Is this early for a freeze warning in Georgia? We are having one tomorrow but, we are always much colder than Georgia. I have a friend in Tucker, and it seems to be hot (next to us) all the time.

I'm up in the mountains at 2000 ft elevation. Tucker is way lower than we are, in the next county south of where my dad lives, so it would always be warmer there. We'll probably be 10-15* colder than they are in the morning. So, it's not that early for us here in far north GA.

 

[drumstick diva]

Thank you I am geographically challenged. Unless I have a map open in front of me, I don't know what states are near each other and forget about their 'capitols,' maybe I should have used the other one, 'capitals '-

indecision

 

[speckledhen]

That's okay, diva, no reason you'd know that. I remember Simon Cowell on American Idol one time telling Diana DeGarmo, a Georgia native, that there were no mountains in Georgia. Tucker is probably just over 3 hours south of me, but in elevation, it's a world apart. I'm close to 1000 ft higher than they are, I think.