during this time, our dogs who have been playing rather nicely with the chickens in the backyard, decided play time was over and killed two of our birds.
we were not upset, but the whole thing was sort of a mess and a really great learning experience. my husband is very comfortable with killing the chickens now (one was alive and on his way to death so he put the poor guy out of his misery), and that was the only part i had been concerned about having a hard time doing. we are set for meat birds!
E can't tell the birds apart. we have 2 buff orpingtons, 2 rhode island reds, 2 lavender orpingtons and one silver laced wyandotte.
bu some odd act of fate, BOTH of our lavender orps ended up being roosters. but one had been fairly sick as a baby and developed about 2 weeks behind the other, even though they were born around the same time.
in august one rooster--Hedwig-- began trying to crow and his comb started getting obscenely large. reptar's comb stopped growing and he made no attempt to make a single sound.
it may be a bit hard to tell, but the more upright one is Hedwig and the one laying lazily around is Reptar. you can see that his comb doesn't extend as high. but you can't see that his comb has more points to it.
Hedwig=dominant roo. reptar=laying down most of the time looking depressed and mangy.
ok, not mangy, that's rude. but he looked thin and somehow deflated all the time.
well, reptar got taken by the dogs, as well as jane, who was VERY high in the pecking order, if not at the top just because she was so.very.fat. she was the chicken who would run through the whole flock of ladies when they were resting, just so she could take someone's spot.
i got home 2 days after the massacre and it wasn't until 2 days after i got home that i realized something:
i hadn't heard a single crow.
normally hedwig crows in the morning, throughout the day when the girls lay or he finds something delicious to eat, and at night to round them all back into the coop.
it wasn't reptar who died. it was hedwig.
we lost our 2 dominant chickens.
some thoughts went through my mind.
1. the dogs managed to kill BOTH dominant chickens, which is impressive no matter how much you didn't want it to happen.
2. i cannot believe reptar is alive
3. this means that the entire pecking order will need to be re-established
here's the thing: i've never heard reptar make a noise, and he has never tried to mount a chicken. never. so i had this nagging concern that we have a rooster who might not know he's a boy, or might have been sick because he's somehow both genders, or might be brain damaged, who knows.
we have been counting on a rooster making it possible for us to have baby chicks, thus producing baby roosters who can be rooster dinners.
at the end of the first week, i noticed that he had put on some weight and was walking upright quite a bit more.
in the second week, his comb began to grow, i'm not even joking.
and this morning i watched him very clumsily (and with much protest from the lady herself) mount and successfully mate with rosa parks.
he still hasn't crowed.
i think our dogs left us with a rooster who can make babies but doesn't make noise.
i feel like i should buy the dogs a thank you card…..
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