Lucky Pierre died a couple of weeks ago. Was fine one day and started to fail the next. We found him dead in the hen house. Still miss him. He was handsome and had absolutely no interest in attacking us. This is not a good time to lose a rooster. It won’t be long till the hens will start going broody. So the search was on for a new rooster. I picked one up from a co-worker. He was handsome, with a crest of feathers on his head. He did not enjoy riding in the car. We left him in a cat carrier that night and turned him loose with the hens the next day. Jeffrey saw him that afternoon, when the hens were drifting off a bit. We haven’t seen him since. Don’t know if a hawk got him or if he’s moved over to the neighbors.
This week, Jeffrey told me that he’d seen him and that he was hanging out with the hens again. And, one morning, I did see one of the hens come in with a rooster. Only, it wasn’t the rooster I’d gotten from the co-worker. It was a rooster that I hadn’t seen before. He seems to be moving in, spending the day with the chickens but returning to the woods at night. Sort of the phantom chicken of the woods. We are waiting to see if he will finally move in with the hens.
We lost two turkeys, an old broadbreasted hen and the tom, to coocidosis. Didn’t realize what was going on. I’ve medicated the others and they are doing fine now. We’ve decided that we can’t raise turkeys up here. They don’t do well in this weather. If I can figure out how to brood chicks without electricity, we’ll add more chickens and then more geese. I think the “more goats” will happen without much aid from us. Should start to have goat kids in a month or so.
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