He's a Keeper

You will find me, a lot of days, looking at the scene above. The chickies are still fun to watch and the difference between the Jersey Giants and the Australorps is mainly size. They are all foraging and scratching up a storm in different areas in their paddock. Right now we have them behind the garage again, but this time have incorporated part of garden space from last year as well as one of my garden boxes that has some old clover in it. Looking forward to planting there this fall!

As I have mentioned in a previous post or two, we have four young roosters. That's three too many. We have already decided that we will keep one, but which one? Over the past couple of weeks I have really started to pay attention to the little roos. There are two that are a little bully-ish and I have no interest in having them stay - they may be the two that were always at each other when they were in the  brooder around 5 weeks old. I would have thought that maybe by now they would have realized that this is it. The reality is that they are not making a very compelling case for themselves. They may outgrow this phase, but I'm not sure. 

The other two appear to be the larger of the boys - and very lean. Not that the two bullies aren't big, they are just not as big. It's hard to believe that these dudes are not done growing yet! 

Anyway, from those two, there is one that is mostly calm and the ladies seem to like nestling in with him after they have eaten in the evening. He likes to lounge near the chick mobile and sometimes one of the other roos will settle down with him until they decide it's time to go to bed. He has been "challenged" a time or two by the others, but not that often. I've noticed that he tends to sit off by himself sometimes. Perhaps he feels pretty comfortable and doesn't need to make a scene...hard to say. 

Most evenings are spent trying to figure out which is which. Last night I was able to figure out who is who and the one we keep. He will be called Thor and this is he... 

Very handsome cockerel!

Right now the only identifying thing is that he has one little tail feather that sticks up at a different angle. Hopefully his feathers won't change too much before we can tag him. I want to make sure that he is the one that we keep and not one of the bullies who might catch up in size and pretend to be the good one.

We don't need tricksey roosters...just a good leader for the little ladies!