This beautiful son of Bucka Roo came home to us a bit ago. His name is Raven and he is a Maran and Americana cross. Isn’t he stunning? I’m not sure the picture does him justice. He has the most beautiful red feathering in his mantle, and a dark coloring below, still a juvenile rooster, but stunning already. Can’t wait to see how he matures.

He’s out in the little coop with all the pullets and roosters! Haha… we have like 10 roosters at the moment. We are slowly becoming a rooster sanctuary. Not that I mind at all, I love roosters. Problem is, it’s hard to house too many roosters. We keep making new coops and arrangements for the birds. A few have returned to us from city placements of chicks and the offer to take back any roosters that might come about. It’s hard to know exactly who is a roo and who is not! I have pretty good luck with matching up pairs of roosters for each flock. And now we have roughly five flocks of birds.

There is the free range flock in which Bucka Roo is the boss and his son Copper is his understudy.

The poultry barn has Argent and Guido. Guido is a nice timid blue Jersy Giant roo. He came to us from the neighbors down the road.

The bantys have Parsley and Sage… and then the little coop is a little overloaded at the moment. Silver, Copper’s brother and Bucka’s son, he rules the roost. But he has Pierre, my goofy $30 fancy New Orleans Black Copper Maran roo chick that was the only one to hatch out of a fancy batch of eggs I ordered online. (Hence the $30 cost… he is cool though… very tame.) But also in the lil’ coop is now Raven, as well as a banty roo named Josh 2, and we just discovered that the remaining barred rock pullet is not a pullet but a rooster… So Martini is now Martin. Haha…

We also have Nickle… or Nick as we call him. He was a very very laid back rooster that some friends brought to us, and his name used to be Penny. Back when he was a girl. Haha…. so now we call him Nickle, having upgraded his name. He wanders about the farm, sort of part of the free range flock, but so timid an laid back that most the time he hangs with the meat chickens. There is a nugget rooster in the bunch, that we call Stir Fry. He hid when we were selecting roosters last week for freezer camp! Jessy said he squeezed through the courtyard gate while we were picking out the big birds and just quickly walked away to hide under the bushes. She watched from the kitchen window! There always has to be one fellow who doesn’t trust what is going on, isn’t there?

And then here is the OTHER Penny Rooster… a lovely barred rock that our friends Jared and Carla raised from a chick from our farm and has turned out to be another rooster, like Martin. Their little girl was sad to have to give their Penny up, but he was so proud of his rooster-ness and was crowing every 15 minutes!!! Not good for a urban chicken. So he had to come back. So their little girl thought he should be renamed Sheldon. I believe the connection is from a tv show! Sheldon is living in a new flock group that we made just for him. He is going to be paired up with Martin, his brother and we will be getting some new laying hens for the two to serve. It’s going to be out by the sheep shack, where Sheldon’s crowing will not annoy us too much! He is a little noisy for sure! I hope once he has a flock of ladies, he might chill out a bit. He’ll have too much to do!

So I guess that really means we have a baker’s dozen of roosters here at the farm. Imagine that.

Oh well… and we have another pair coming to live with us as well! Chicks hatched out by our friend’s broody hen, Lucy! She’s a beautiful salmon Faverelle, that is just broody crazy! She is actually sitting on another eight eggs at the moment! I’m hoping that she can hatch out a bunch of girls!!!! We sure need girl chickens with all these roosters!!!!

This is Mildred. She’s named after my dad’s mother. And just like my grandma, our Mildred is a feisty independent gal who has taken to roosting outside at night, up in the trees! She’s a beautiful cross breed… we think perhaps a white leghorn and maybe a red laced Wyandotte. Something. I think she’s stunning. She’s one of my favorite ladies here at the farm.

Just couldn’t talk about chickens without mentioning Gideon, our ram and his flock of chickens. I think he adores chickens. He always has at least four or five ladies in his paddock, taking care of any room service he needs. And they all sit with him, and walk right under his legs and around him like he’s a big dog or something. He lets them eat out of his grain dish and they sit on him when he’s laying down and chewing his cud. He’s never alone. He watches them with great fascination. I just think he likes chickens. He seems content with their presence. The hens avoid the other sheep and Cody pony. But not Gideon. They seem really relaxed and hang with him all day long. It’s a cute relationship for sure…