Keeping chickens is one of my domestic pleasures. They are easy to keep and the rewards are immense.  I still get an excited feeling picking out their eggs each day and using those eggs in cooking brings greater levels of significance and responsibility.  Now the weather is getting better their entertainment value increases too as they strut around their pen and bathe in the dust bowls they dig for themselves.

It’s not been plain sailing recently though with nature taking its course and the menace rooster up to his old tricks again.  This time he has truly blotted his copy book and George will not be permitted to rule his roost through domestic abuse any more.  In fact George won’t be able to rule the roost at all.

He’s been banished from his harem once and for all. A bitter blow for a rooster who prides himself on being the leader of the chicken pack.

Although we like our chickens to live their lives by chicken rules we have created a situation where a rooster of magnificent proportions is in charge of other breeds of chickens who are of much smaller statue.  We’ve already had problems with him wearing out the large breed Plymouth Barred Rock hens and causing them injury so our smaller hens don’t stand a chance.

A week or so ago I found ginger staggering around with what looked like half her wing missing.  She had definitely lost feathers and she had the tell tale injury previously made by George with the other hens.  Poor little Ginger, she doesn’t deserve to be sat on and squashed by a rooster who must be 5 times her size.  Worse than that though is what he’d done to Charlotte one of the Barred Rock hens. George had been terrorising her to the point that he had pecked her comb to bleeding point and she no longer wanted to come out of the hen house.  It took a lot of chicken watching from the window to work out what was going on.  It was such a sad sight – the moment that George went close to Charlotte she bowed in readiness for her ticking off.

It broke my heart to have to clean up her wounds but nothing gave me greater pleasure than slinging the rooster brute out of the pen and into the bush.  The hens have now been George less for a week and they are much happier and laying has improved.

All the hens seemed to have found their own pecking order and rub along nicely together.  No doubt that the Barred Rocks are in charge but Charlotte has stopped hiding away and has even started to push around the smaller birds a little when it comes to grabbing the corn treats.  Before very long her comb will be back to it’s normal state of health just like Bess’s here.

I think George’s bullying might also explain while Molly and Chloe started to go awol again in the bush.  After returning back to base for some food one day they are now settled roosting in the hen house at night.

As for Ginger, she seems to be back to her cheeky ways.  First out of the hen house every morning, first at the gate and first to grab the first morsels of food I bring to the run for them.  She’s still got a very bare patch but her hip has healed and I’m sure that she’ll be back to her sassy ways in the fullness of time.

George is distinctly unhappy about his new circumstance.  Little does he know I’ve bought some more posts to create his own private run.  That way I can still let the ladies out in the bush for a good scratch around without him inflicting any more damage on them.  I’m going to start to look for a new home for him. I’m sure that he will be a great asset to someone interested in breeding Barred Rock chickens but for the moment he is on guard with his flock outside of the run. So if anyone is interested in a magnificent rooster to rule their chicken roost let me know and I’d be delighted to put him up for free adoption.

With the domestic traumas in the chicken house now settled I can start to enjoy chicken keeping once again.  Now here’s the really weird thing – I even lovingly collect their poo as it is a key component in the compost heap will work wonders for our vegetable growing activities in the not to distant future.  Loving chicken poo, that’s not something I would have even contemplated let alone celebrated in my executive-executive days but as a domestic-executive things are very different now.  And I wouldn’t change it for the world!