Thursday, August 19, 2010

And Then There Were Two

This week we sold two of our roosters, Big Red and Ricky.

Big Red


Ricky
We believe they both went to good homes. 
And now we only have two remaining roosters - Leggy and Muffin.

Leggy

Muffin
Hopefully this gives our ladies a break!

Ladies laying

This is just a few of our pullets.  From top left clockwise, Bella (the eternally broody hen who's not laying, just sitting on nothing), Raspberry, Lucy, Zoner

(This pic was taken the day before the coop had a thorough cleaning!)

10 comments:

Benita said...

Poor Bella. Can't you get some fertilized eggs and sneak them under her?

Leigh said...

I love it that your ladies are each in their own nest box! What a great photo. Maybe I should print out a copy and show it to my girls. Maybe they'd get the hint???

Rick (Ratty) said...

I guess that lessens the competition among the roosters. Most roosters I've been around can get more than a little mean at times.

Razzberry Corner said...

Benita - Bella recently was a surrogate mom and raised 8 guinea keets. We have another hen who raised 5 chicks at the same time. Then a few weeks later 2 more hens raised 4 chicks each. As soon as Bella saw the new babies she went broody again. She loves little babies. But we have alot of chicks and keets and pullets and cockerels now! No more for us! Poor Bella just needs to get "un-broody"!

Leigh - We have 9 total nest boxes, and I've seen 8 of them full at the same time. But most of the time 4 pullets are in at the same time, each in their own box. Our ladies are morning layers, so at about 10 am the nest boxes are busy.

~Lynn

Terry said...

Ricky is a handsome bird. Well, they all are.

Razzberry Corner said...

Ratty - Roosters seem to be full of hormones. They always want to prove who's the boss, even to me, their "mama". I keep an old straw broom handy, if they start walking sideways near me, I just touch that broom and they run from me.

Terry - Thanks! I really thought Ricky was pretty. But he was exceptionally rough on the hens. He would bite their neck and not let go, even though they ran away. So they would run in circles, and he would continue to bite them, until another rooster came and made him quit. Poor hens.

~Lynn

Dog Trot Farm said...

Hopefully things will die down a bit at Raspberry Corner now that the testosterone level has somewhat diminished. I think your girl's have earned some peace and quiet. But, hello those were some fine looking fellas you had there, if I were a chicken I might have thrown my saddle to the wind!

Genny said...

The roosters are beautiful! It's too bad they're so hard on the hens and sometimes people. I love the color of their feathers.

Robin said...

Oh good. I'm glad you found a home for two more of the boys. That should make your hens more happy and maybe they won't have to wear the saddles for very long.

Razzberry Corner said...

Julie- Lol, you are funny!!

Genny - I've been trying to breed the chickens so that we have colorful, pretty baby chicks. Or, I should say, I hatched the eggs from the hens that I thought would give us pretty chicks.

Robin - Now that there's only 2 roos, I haven't seen any fiesty behavior going on at all. So we stopped putting the saddles on the ladies. I check the ladies every night to see if they are healing. I found the saddles didn't keep the roos off the ladies, buy hopefully they protected them.

~Lynn