Poor Muddy Roosters!

We have gotten more rain, the area under "The Big Top" is rather squishy.  The rain is washing the dirt down the hill, picking up the pine needles and settling in the fence and against the coops and pens.  It is holding the moisture now, several of my breeding pens have a few inches of muck in them.  It rained a half inch in fifteen minutes with the last front.  The good part is, the grass is starting to grow again.  I have been trying to find perennial rye grass to reseed it, so far I have had no luck.  I can special order some, but it is $85 for a bag and they said if it doesn't come up the first time, it won't be back next year and there are no guarantees.  I may have to get some in Texarkana.  I would have to keep the the poultry off of it while it started growing too.  I would rather not buy a fifty pound bag of seed.  If I can get a ten pound bag and see if I can get it growing first, then I might invest in more.  I may look on Amazon, they have pretty much everything on there...why not grass seed?

My husband and I are both realizing we need another big coop, we don't really have the money to build one right now but, it must be built before winter sets in good.  I found some free pallets and may try and go get another big load of them.  I will attempt to make a coop out of pallets.  I found a feed store that sells them for three dollars each too.   Whatever I end up building, I will be constructing by myself, so It can't be too terribly heavy...it must be durable though.  This will be for the roosters, and they fight so it also needs to be divided into sections and easy to clean.  My mind has been working ninety to nothing for several days trying to figure out an inexpensive way to construct the house/s.  It has to be able to handle a snow load, we got snow twice last year and the second time was about ten inches.  That doesn't happen very often in Texas...well, not in the Fort Worth/Dallas area anyway.  I want to use cattle panels in the construction, they are pretty sturdy and the curve I will put in them will shed snow pretty well with just heavy duty tarps as the roofing material.  If I order the white tarps, they will get more light inside of them, that is what I got for the side of the big run on the Big Coop.

I am having issues with the last batch of roosters that hatched out now. I need to separate them too, they are mating machines and they pick on the most vulnerable of my hens.  I still have about ten hens that have no feathers on the lower part of their backs, because of the roosters.  The quantity of eggs I was getting has gone way down too.  Light plays a factor in egg production, hens need 14 hours of daylight to produce an egg, but I think that and the stress of so many roosters wanting to mate is causing havoc in the hen house.  I am beginning to understand why hatcheries cull the roosters as babies.  I don't know how to sex chicks, but with Sex-links you can tell visually between the sexes.  I may have to hatch a batch of sex-linked chickens...there is an egg shortage and I need layers...not roosters!  It seems like I get a greater number of roosters every time I hatch chicks.  I would like more Marans, they are a more docile breed and since my dog Bailey killed one of my white Marans hens, it would be good to have a few to replace the ones I have lost, I lost a white Leghorn looking one too.  My broody hen Brown Racers baby, she had started laying and I really liked her...but, I guess Bailee does not want chickens going in the backyard.  She has killed any chicken that has jumped the fence when I wasn't there to intervene.

I rooster Buddy Chicken bit me on the arm while I was cleaning his cage, it was almost healed up and yesterday I grabbed up a rooster terrorizing multiple hens.  I guess he was pretty pissed off that I grabbed him off of her while he was busy with her.  A surprised rooster equals another bite and bruise on my arm...just above the spot that was almost healed...I grabbed him by the wings and let go of one to grab him by the legs...that was a mistake.  He flapped his loose wing and was able to get me good...not only about an inch and a half cut/abrasion but about a two inch bruise around it that is swollen.  I washed it well and have been applying tea tree oil.  I have been tempted to use Scarlex Scarlet Oil, which is an animal wound dressing that I use on the chickens.  I have a hen on my back porch that I have been spraying her feet with it for a staph infection called Bumblefoot.