Ang.’s Chicken Coop

We have moved things around a bit. We have had 2 separate coops all summer long. The north coop had all of our older chickens in it and the south coop had all of the hatchery surprise chickens and a few odd balls I had picked up at various places. And then we had the chicken room. It was supposed to just be a room to house the smaller chicks. And it was until I got that fateful call from the farm store about the late delivery of chicks. So that room became the coop that house 60 something chicks up until about midsummer. We then kicked them all out into the north coop and hoped for the best. There are a lot of roosters from that batch of chicks. A LOT! It had become apparent in the last month that all of those roosters were tormenting the hens in that coop. I think there was more smoke from cigars out there than you would find in a gentleman’s club. I mean the rooster to hen ration had to be something like 3:1. That is not good at all. The girls had stopped laying. They were hiding in the nest boxes. They were only coming out twice a day for food and water. Something had to be done!

We spent a couple of days catching all of the hens from the north coop and all of the roosters from the south coop and flip flopping them. So now we have this,

The bachelor pad. Most of the roosters here are slated for the hatchet. All total we will only be keeping 4 roosters. The black rooster is one of them.

Now, some of the fellas did not like the bachelor pad and they made their escape. Unfortunately for them, a coon has been lurking in the barn and he likes chicken. I think that we have lost 5 or 6 of these rogue roosters to that coon.

We also have The Spa. (Yes, I know there are still a couple roosters in here. I have 1 more to catch and that will be that.)

The ladies like The Spa. The nest boxes are nearly always full.

And they are enjoying the romance from these 2 lucky fellas,

Old Blue our Polish rooster who always, always, always runs away from me.

And Mr. Peanut our little banty rooster.

Needless to say we are now getting between 2 and 3 dozen eggs a day! The girls really like their new home! And I really like that we are getting more eggs and that they are happier. Once the roosters are all butchered, we aren’t sure what we will do. We may just leave all of the girls together and use the Bachelor pad to raise our meat birds in. We have a while to make that decision though. For now, everyone is happy and that is what matters.