My Roosters

I've decided that its story time today...I want to talk about my roosters today...Sinatra and Martin, who are both Rhode Island Red Roosters. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures today to go along with my stories, but I have to share some stories anyways.

First of all Let me Start with Sinatra....Sinatra is a bit of a stand offish kind of guy, he's a big rooster, not as big as some breeds, but he's a big guy. We don't try to pet him, or force our attentions upon him, because he stands next to us when he feels like it, and if we move to quickly he takes off down the run like a rocket. We found him on Craigslist for $5 bucks. He came from a farm, and was in this huge fenced in area with lots of other roosters and chickens (and I mean lots). The guy that was selling off all of his excess roosters and chickens, just poured out a big bag of cracked corn into these big bowls, and everybody came running, and he just grabbed up our rooster and put him in the carrier we brought along. He was about a year old according to the guy we got him from.  When we got him home, we didn't think we were going to be able to get him out of the carrier that he was in, so my hubby started to take it apart so he could get out, but it turned out there was no need, because as soon as he herd his new harem, he managed to get himself turned around and out of that carrier like it was nothing. And of course my 8 girls batted their eyes and swarmed him, and everybody lived happily ever after there.  He really is quite laid back in his own way though...we've been able to add plenty of young chickens, and he just looks at them and keeps on keeping on. He wasn't bothered by any of the young cockerels that we've added in (which have been butchered except for the one...but I'll bet to him). When those young cockerels tried to challenge him, he just pecked them on the head, and went back to scratching in the dirt. 

Well right now, I have a bunch of chicks in coops out in the chicken house. Sinatra has discovered that he likes the food that they have been spilling onto the ground through the bottoms of the coops, so he's been hanging around those quite a bit. So this morning, he finally clued in to what I have in the big bowls that I carry in there in the mornings and evenings when I'm refilling the chick feeders and water containers. I looked down at him and he was standing closer to me than he has ever stood before. I have a feeling we're going to be good friends before summer gets here. I threw a little on the ground for him out of my bowl. I have more chicks here in the house that will be rotated out into those coops as soon as we are able to rotate the current chicks out into the mini run we will be setting up inside of the big run so that we can transition everybody better.

Now onto Martin. Martin is about 4 months old (I'd have to look at my calendar). We hatched him out with a big batch back in November. I'm not completely sure he's 100% RIR but my hubby seems to think he is, but then I've never raised a rooster from Egg to Adult before, so I'm not going to argue anything at this point in chicken raising.  Martin and Sinatra get along just fine. They even roost together sometimes. We figure they probably will because there are LOTS of females, and there is plenty of space in the house and run. 

Martin is a funny guy, when we are standing in the chicken house doing work in there, feeding, or filling water dishes, or cleaning off the tops of the coops where some chickens like to roost or play, and do what chickens do (poop) he will make sure we know he is there. He will peck at our legs, not hard, and when we look down at him, he gets this look on his face like HI! Sometimes he will just stand toe to toe with us, and stare up at us. When we look down at him, he's got that same look on his face...HI! He really is quite amusing...When I'm filling up the hanging feeders that everybody eats out of (grown up chicken wise) he is right there trying to eat out of the top of them as we are filling them...and then when we walk over to the second feeder, he races over there to do the same thing.

When we go to give the chickens treats, tomatoes, bread crumbs, whatever, Sinatra always clucks for the girls to come and get some, and will watch them while they eat, and if there is a lot, he will get in on the action and eat some....Now Martin on the other hand, he races in, grabs a mouth full and takes off down to the end of the run to make sure and get to eat his share. He likes his food...but then he's still a growing boy.

Originally we had planed on getting our second RIR rooster by keeping one of Sinatra's boy chicks from the RIR pullets that we have. We thought it would be cool to keep a boy from him to keep his Legacy going. We probably still will do that, and we will probably do the same From Martin as well. But we probably wont do that until next summer. For right now, I think we have plenty of roosters to go around.

Although, when we were checking all of our chicks that we had bought and hatched out this year, we noticed that our Straight run of Silver Lace Wyandottes, (sp) that we have an even split, 3 girls, and 3 boys.  I've decided that I'm going to go ahead and keep one of the boys. I'm just going to go ahead and hatch out my own replacements if I like the breed enough as the summer/winter goes by.

Alright, that's it for my rooster ramblings!!!! And by the way, its snowing...again...*sigh*