Rooster trouble
Nothing about this is unexpected. We knew the two surprise roosters in our fall chick batch could spell trouble. We have been keeping a close eye on them both, but things hit a fever pitch today.
We have the sweetest, fluffy, gray and white, feather-footed Cochin rooster called Sarge. Sarge is such a good boy. He chats it up with the ladies and always stays super close to (or typically in) the run.
Two days ago I noticed Sarge was way out in the back field, by himself, far from his normal positions. He seemed to go into the coop super late, when normally he would take his place on the roost pretty early.
Then yesterday as I was approaching the coop to close things up there was a little kerfluffle in the corner by the nesting boxes. Slim, the aggressive new rooster came bounding out, leaving Sarge with his head down, frozen in the corner. He let me pick him up and didn’t appear to be injured. But you could tell his spirit was shot. His beautiful feathers were actually sagging.
I carried him around for awhile, and he eventually took a spot on the bottom rung of one of the roosts, but big red flag.
Then this morning I couldn’t find Sarge anywhere. Eventually I found him, head down under a pile of big twigs Montana built in the corner of the run. Upon inspection, I could see his head was all bloody by his comb. Poor Sarge! I immediately took him inside to clean him up in the kitchen sink and then Montana helped me set him up with some food and water in the goat barn.
Unfortunately he didn’t seem any less stressed up there by himself. At about 4pm I was trying to catch him to bring him back down with the other chickens, and instead he took off running the complete wrong direction into the front field. I had to enlist Montana’s help again to wrangle him back the right way. The photos below are of his escape.
On his way back I witnessed the OTHER young rooster terrorizing him. So now I am just waiting for Steve to come home from a meeting, because he has two bad roosters to dispatch tonight! I was really hoping they would just be good watch-birds, but this aggressive behavior toward the other birds, especially Sarge, will not be tolerated!
