Rooster Choos'n

The chicken yard has been in quite an uproar since the "good" rooster was injured and put into the recovery pen.  There's nobody to keep the seven juvenile (and extremely horny) roosters in line.  They were really running the younger hens and two timid older hens ragged.  Most of the older hens won't put up with their shenanigans and give them a good what-for.  Hehe.  I said "Shenanigans".

Since I cleaned out the kidding pen in anticipation of Nettie's due date in three weeks, I've been having to hand deliver almost all of the nineteen juvenile chickens from the kidding pen to the chicken roosts each and every night.  It's getting pretty old.  That, and the fact that two of the roosters will try to peck my eyes out when I grab them doesn't make for a pleasant evening.  There are four multi-colored roosters and three Barred Rock looking roosters.  The colorful ones are the meanest.  Of course the flashiest of them is the pecker-head that will manage to give me a bite hard enough to draw blood.  He's the first rooster going into the stock pot.

In order to weed out which two roosters I was going to keep, I figured that I would let two of them run with the flock for a day or so to see how they treated the hens.  The others would have to be penned up.  So I finally got around to making a rooster bachelor pen.  Cleaned out the junk that had accumulated in the dog kennel / chicken tractor, put a little hut in there (bottom part of a junk find doghouse, flipped over) a cinder block and a perch, food and water bowls.  All was ready for the roosters.  Now I just had one more night of rooster wrangling to get them into their new abode.

When I went into the kidding pen to gather the birds, there were only four roosters in there and it didn't include the soup-pot rooster.  I managed to get them without them drawing blood much incident then went looking for the other three roosters.  The rogue three and several of the younger hens were already in the chicken coop......what good chickens!  Except one of those "good chickens" was the pecker-headed rooster.  I yanked him out and threw him placed him in the pen with the other four roosters.

And this morning has been relatively calm.   Of course there are still two roosters chasing hens around the yard, but it's not a chicken-gang-bang anymore.  The roosters in the bachelor pen seem pretty ticked.  I'd say I feel sorry for them, but I'd be lying.