I still have not completed my goose and duck house, I was going out to work on it but decided to check on all my chickens. It takes me quite awhile to fill up waterers and clean waterers, but yesterday I did clean and refill a couple of pools too. Then I decided to clean the Condo. The coop we call the Condo...
I generally make several trips from the house were we store feed back out to the poultry yard, yesterday was no exception. Here lately the roosters have been very active and amorous towards the ladies, the ladies decide to jump the fence and go outside of the penned area. I have been having to chase several of them down and put them back over the fence, it is not exactly safe for them jumping the fence...we have predators. If they are hungry or think I have treats for them they get impatient sometimes too. Yesterday one of my Barnevelder hens decided to jump the fence into the backyard with the three dogs. It is not good when a chicken jumps into the backyard...my dog Bailee, at least here lately has decided to try and catch them. She has killed a chicken before, one of my many roosters...apparently it got into the back yard while I had gone to town. Bailee believes it is her job to chase chickens and if she catches them, she will hold them down and I think possibly they have a heart attack. She didn't eat the last one, it was found dead by the corner of the fence. Most of the time, the geese can stick their heads through the fence and pick at the grass and the dogs don't bother them. Yesterday, I heard a commotion when I was getting feed and knew a chick had flown over the fence.
Bailee, is fast and she goes into chase mode when a chicken flies over the fence. Then I have to kick it into high gear to get to it before she does, she doesn't listen very well when she is busy running after and trying to stop the chicken. I scream at her NO, Bailee...and it is like she doesn't hear me...she runs from one end of the yard to the other with the chicken running for it's life...and it is. I was in hot pursuit yesterday, trying to get the Barnvelder hen so Bailee would not harm it. Bailee caught it several times and held it down but it would flap it's wings and get away. Chickens actually have pretty powerful wings, they hurt when they hit you in the face too. Anyway, I continued to try and get the chicken, running around like a banshee, screaming at the dogs to leave my chicken alone and at one point tackled Bailee, it just kind of happened, Kensie and Sophie gained interest but they listen a bit better than Bailee. I was actually on the ground with my arms wrapped around Bailee and the other two started after the chicken.
I hurt hitting the ground...so I was limping a bit. I got Bailee on the porch and started yelling at the other dogs to leave the chicken alone, it is MY chicken! Bailee was sitting on the porch, Kensie and Sophie were close to the chicken and I kept having to tell Bailee to stay because she kept getting up like she was going to join me for the chase. I finally got the gate opened and the Barnevelder out of the backyard. I decided to grab food for the chicks in the grow out pen and check on them. I kept seeing roosters attacking my hens...so, I decided to do a rooster round up.
It is not easy catching chickens. I am fifty six years old, not a spring chicken myself any more...and here I am chasing chickens in the heat of the day. My knee is aching from hitting the ground when I tackled Bailee...Bailee is my Catahoula Mix dog, they are called Hog Dogs...because they are generally trained to catch and take down wild hogs. She is a stout, muscular dog, very strong and can be stubborn as an Ox. We have been filling up the pens I built for breeding, with roosters. Yesterday, I observed several that were less than gentlemanly towards the ladies and proceeded to run after them, wrangle if you will...and catch them one by one and put them in pens. If the other roosters attacked them too badly, I let them out and tried another pen.
One pen is full of Sex-linked roosters, one pen has one Polish we call Pompadour and a few others that are mixes my husband calls the Bros, we caught a lot of young Cream Legbars over the weekend and a few of the Dorking roosters and they are in a pen together, and some of the roosters we took out of the Rooster Condo to begin with are in another pen, and I ran around and caught some more Polish roosters and put them in yet another pen...a couple of those are part of the Shady Hill gang. All in all my breeding pens now have about 30 roosters in them and I still have more to catch. I have three empty pens left, but I will have to make more gates to be able to use them.
Oh, and the easiest way to catch a rooster...wait until they jump a hen to try and mate them, you only have a few seconds to grab them...but it is a whole lot easier than chasing them everywhere. That, or trapping them in a coop or run, although that is never easy and you can bang your head on roost bars or nest boxes.
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