For the Love of Roosters

Uno

This weekend I said my third goodbye to Uno, my boomerang rooster.  We have tried re-homing him twice at a home near us, but he keeps coming back.  I think it is mean-spirited, but council has stupid rules about having more than one rooster, so Uno had to go.  I loved Uno - he was a funny little rascal right from the beginning.  Out of all of the chicks that our promiscuous Electra came home with, there were only 3 yellow ones.  Within the first day, two were stepped on by the other chickens and died.  It is very sad to say, but I think Uno must have been the smartest - or the most agile. 

He managed to endure the countless attacks from butcher birds, crows and kookaburras that decimated the rest of his brothers and sisters, leaving only three.  And, as luck would have it, two were roosters. Bugger.

We always knew we could have only one rooster, and from the beginning I knew that I would keep the black and white one (previously named Dot and renamed Harvey HenBanger when his gender became apparent).  Harvey's colouring became more magnificent the older he got and he also had a more timid nature, content to let Uno be the first at everything.  This appealed to me after our last failed attempt at housing a rooster.  Poor old Joe Cocker had to meet an untimely demise when he decided that I was most definitely the enemy.  He was a big, big boy and had big, big spurs.   He liked to use these spurs often on me.  His beady little eyes would follow me, waiting for my attention to wander or my back to turn and then - BAM! - I would have blood running down my arms or legs or both.  I tried all of the tricks to get him to realise that I was the boss, but these only ever worked for a few days.  Then it was a return to bleeding limbs and my increasing trepidation at having anything to do with the chook pen.

Handsome Harvey HenBanger

Uno was definitely the boss of the other chickens, but Harvey would always get in a sneaky 'visit' with the hens behind his back.  Who was the smarter rooster?  I'll let you decide.

Despite much advertising and asking around, sadly nobody wanted a free, non-purebred rooster.  It looked like his fate was going to be the same as the fate of thousands of roosters.  At the last minute we discovered that there is a lady that lives in our area that 'collects' roosters from a nearby produce store and rehomes/rescues them to live on her property.  All we had to do was drop him off, and she would go in to pick him up.  Hallelujah!  Uno lives to see another day.  I sadly dropped him off, and had a little weep on the way home.  The little brat had managed to worm his way into my heart, even though I knew all along that he wasn't the rooster that would be staying with us.  I hope he has a happy life - apparently he'll be living with 50-70 other roosters, so he will be very busy bossing everyone around.

Harvey HenBanger is now the sole rooster and the boss of his flock.  I'll be honest - I was watching him for a few hours over the weekend - he needs to pick up his game.  He can't seem to keep all of the girls together and gets flustered when they wander into different parts of the yard.  Then there are those pesky helicopters. One flew over and he made his alarm call (I notice that the girls didn't pay much attention to it, he's going to have to work on his authority).  Harvey started running in one direction, then stopped, looked up in the sky, flicking his head back and forth, then ran a bit more, then stopped.  His confusion was obvious. 

He has also been running up behind the hens with his neck feathers all fluffed and then stopping at the last minute when they once again ignore him. The rooster dance has been performed around them with great gusto and yet they still ignore him.  Part of me hopes he figures it all out (he will, they almost always do), while part of me finds it terribly entertaining, and I just want to watch him all day.  He's a beautiful and handsome time waster.

But all is not lost, late in the afternoon I heard feathers flapping and saw him finally achieve his goal atop of Sesame. I must say, he did look pretty proud of himself.  And rightly so.

Mission Accomplished!