Beautiful Life of Zig Zag Zoom

I have shared with you the going story of Rooty, the use to be wimpy. rooster. Well I have culled most of his competition and now he has discovered his manhood. He is climbing in any hen in site and when the one the last four other remaining roosters go near his hens, he defends them with force. I guess it just took a little longer for him to grow up than the rest.

Well I have culled 12 roosters so far this year and I have four more that I will be culling or taking to a swap meet in September. Rooty will be my only rooster that I keep. I ended up with 18 hens. I had nineteen that made it to almost laying age but I found one dead on the coop floor. It looked like she broke her neck. I assume she fell off the roost and I blamed my rowdy roosters so that is why I ended up culling seven this week.

It was just Karen and I this week so she was stuck holding the head out for me to chop it. You should have seen her with her head turned and eyes closed. It was funny but at least she got out and helped me. She also helped me pluck the feathers. I did the meat carving and she did the meat cleaning and it took about a half hour per roosters. I have been so busy that I have not had much tome to do much including getting pictures of the chickens put up on the blog. Tomorrow, we are leaving for a cabin for week so it will have to be next week. I will have no Internet access so that means no post for at least a week.

From my coop to yours, have a great week and be sure to drop me a comment to let me know my readers are still there!

If you have been reading my blog, you should have read my post about Rooty the wimpy rooster. This is another story about him. By the way, he has started to crow but he is still a bit afraid of the other roosters and some hens.

The other night, my wife and I went to the chicken barn to close in all the chickens for the night. When we went into the barn, Rooty was on the roost with a couple of the smaller hens. One of the older hens from last year was pecking at the younger hens. We watched Rooty take his wing and wrap it around the little hens to protect them from the older hen. We tried to get the camera but as luck would have it, the batteries were dead.

I have never seen such a thing from a rooster. I have seen hens protect their own young but never seen a rooster shield some younger chickens before. It was so cute and though Rooty is still not tough, he showed that maybe he is a protector of the weak. That is the joy of raising chickens, you get to discover new and interesting things everyday.

Rooty is a pure Araucana and he will be the only rooster I am keeping from this years chickens. I have listed some of the other roosters on Craigslist and I will be sending what I do not sell to the freezer via the axe.

Like the cute story of Rooty? Leave a comment to share you own chicken stories!

Yesterday I had to do a rescue of one of my roosters. It is a pure Aracana rooster and he is a wimp. One of the other roosters from this year’s batch attacked him and had him pinned under a board in the barn. I had to break the board free to free him. I decided to take him out of the same area as teh new chcikens and put him with last years’ hens. He got beat up by them too.

He is a beautiful rooster but he has no courage. He tried to get back in with this years chickens so I decided to try it and three of the chickens attacked him really bad. I had to take it out again and put back with the hens. He seems healthy and is quite big but I am not sure why they are all picking on him. I had already decided prior to this that he was the one rooster I was keeping to breed with but now I am not sure. I will have to see if he starts to get along with the next couple of weeks. He is 14 weeks old so maybe he will get some courage as he comes into his own.

On the note of roosters, I am hearing another crow from the barn so I will soon be able to confirm at least two roosters plus the one I rescued which is not crowing yet but has a definite rooster tail. I am counting what I think is

Yesterday I was out in the barn with my neighbor and we were trying to determine what was roosters in my batch of chicks this year. All of a sudden one of the chicks let me know that he was a rooster. He let out the cutest little crowing.

The surprise part of the whole thing was that it was one that I would have pegged for a hen. It was one that looked like a barred rock and everything I read, the hens have shorter combs as a pullet and black streaks on their legs. Well this little rooster had a little comb and black streaks on his leg. No I am more confused than every on how to sex them. I thought I had all the roosters picked out but I was wrong.

I am heading to the feed store today to try and get some leg bands to mark out the roosters when I find them. I will be getting rid of all the roosters in the fall. We plan to fill our freezer.

Another bit of news from  the old homestead is that thanks to my neighbor, we discovered we already have a nice patch of Rhubarb growing on our property. We got some roots from Karen’s cousins this year and planted them for next year. The neighbor came over yesterday and thought the old owners planted some Rhubarb several years back. She showed me where she thought it was and sure enough, we have three big bunches. YUM YUM.

That’s all the news for now. If you have news to share, feel free to drop me a comment or two.

We have had a few problems with our rooster getting mean and attacking. I learned to deal with him but when I was down with my back, Karen had to take care of the chickens and the rooster attacked her and did a number on her leg.

We already had all the eggs that we needed for the season fertilized so there was no real need to have a rooster anymore. We did our first cull. I took him to our cousin Kenny’s house and he showed me how to do a clean kill and pluck the feathers. I though it would be much worse but it did not bother me. I made Karen stand there with us so we can start doing our own when needed.

I thought the rooster would be hard to catch but I did it pretty quickly. The problem was, he stirred up the hens and one of the hens fell between an opening in the walls and got stuck. I thought she was dead or broke her neck and I tried to get her out but she fell too far. I ended up going to the outside of the barn and breaking through the wall. By time I did this, she flew up half way and I went back in and rescued her. I still thought she might be hurt but as soon as I lifted her out she flew off with the rest of her flock. Silly hen!

All the baby chicks but one is doing good. That poor little thing was attacked by the rest and pecked hard. I am not sure if she is going to make it but we are all crossing our fingers. They are growing fast and since I do not have electrical power in the barn, Kenny is still keeping them until they can come home without need for additional heat.

This week we are building a room inside the coop to keep the new chicks when they come home away from the older hens. This will be just fenced in so they can get use to each other before mixing them.

We have another batch of eggs scheduled to hatch next week so I will have more pictures to share. I will also be putting up some updated chick pictures as soon as I get time.

That is the update from the old homestead right now. Stay tuned for some cool pictures and video links of the chickens.

Ok, if you were mislead by the title and thought you were coming here for another reason, you should be ashamed!

click on the picture for full view

I just wanted to post the king of the chicken coop. Here is a picture of my rooster “Melvin”. He lives a dream life of having 7 ladies to do his bidding.

He was born in the spring and was friendly as can be when I got him in July but now I can not trust him. Me and him have a good understanding though. If he behaves, I will not play baseball with him and a 2×4 board.

Enjoy the picture and when you step in dog poop, just say “That Blozzz” and move on.