Who Dat?

I got a new little Houdan Roo Tuesday evening. One of the other vendors at the Westside market had him, and needed to find him a new home. They live in the city, where you can have a few chickens, but hens only. One of their "girls" started crowing, Oops! He's a very handsome fellow, as you can see. About 12 weeks old.

Well when I said I would take the guy, they went home and brought him back in a cat carrier. I wasn't quite sure what to do with him when I got home, I had never introduced a roo to the flock before. I also wasn't sure if the other chickens would recognize him as being male, since he is only half grown. I gave him water, and left him in the cat carrier in the mud room overnight.

First thing in the morning I put the little guy in a large wire doge crate, with food and water, in the shade in the chicken yard. then I let the girls out. I have 13 full grown hens, and 15 pullets (young female chickens) that are about 5 months old. The little roo (his name is apparently Emily, we will have to do something about that!) was a little freaked for a minute, and then fine. The older hens spent most of the day hanging around his cage, clucking at him ... and he was cooing right back at them ,looking all happy and proud of himself! (Yeah, I'm the man!) LOL

Well since there had been no aggressive moves on anyone's part, I figured I'd let him out, around 2 pm. I opened the cage, he calmly walked right out and right up to one of the big hens and boom! Hit her with both feet, and them walked up to a couple more of the big girls and did the same thing. Totally caught them, and me, off guard. Well that didn't go over too well. And he was doing so well wooing them before! The girls turned around, looked at him, and each gave him a sound smack down. (You're, not the man, you're the boy!) He went off under another tree and was sulking and scratching around there. That was all the conflict. He followed the hens into the coop at night, and when I went out early the next morning he was at the feeder with a couple of the girls. He has some integrating to do yet, but it seems he's well on his way.