Rooster In The House!

With all the rain we had...came terrible mud.  Thick goo actually.  My poor penned up roosters have suffered because of it.  I put a few of them in the new cage I made.  My husband gave them baths and we doctored them up when needed.  A couple of them got squished into the mud and ended up with eye infections, so I gave one a couple of shots of antibiotics and put an antibiotic ointment in his eye, he is on the back porch.  I have one in the house that I have put eye ointment in one eye, he didn't have much of the cheesy material in his eye, so no shots.  I can tell he is feeling better...he was crowing in the house this morning.  He was responding to the roosters in cages on the back porch.  Even though officially it is spring here now, we had a light freeze the night before last.  I moved some of my chicks to the outdoor brooder on the porch, so I had to keep the latest rooster In the house until he was dry.  It is easier to just doctor on him when I don't have to catch him too...he is crowing again now!  It is quite the surprise to hear a rooster crowing in your house, they are very loud.

I will probably try and move the roosters on the back porch to a pen today.  It is suppose to rain a few more inches this week though, so I am not sure how good an idea that would be.  I need to build more housing, so I guess I should get to work on my breeding pens.  I will till the area today and try and make it more level.  I need to put out some grass seed too, my old garden area needs to grow back...the more grass I have for the chickens, the less they eat of their food and that helps with feed cost.  I sold all of my mixed breed hens now.  But I am hatching some chicks to try and replace the eggs, a lot of people want full grown hens that are already laying too...I cannot sell them if I don't have them.  I have goose, duck, turkey and chicken eggs in my incubators now.  I have chicks in one brooder in the house, ducks and a goose in one, and two large geese...Hope and Mercy in a swimming pool brooder in the house too...but they are old enough to go outside now.  We are slowly trying to integrate them with the rest of the flock.  We have put them in a fenced area behind the main coop during the day a few times, but as cold as it has been the past few days, we bring them back inside at night.  We are growing these geese out to try and get Thor some ladies, he seems pretty interested in getting to know them.  Thor is just over two years old, he needs companionship other than the ducks he hangs around with.  Loki basically took the other females when we got them, so we are trying to bond Loki's daughters to Thor...we know they are Loki's because they all have blue eyes like Loki.  I even know the mother goose, she is the smallest of the three girls, she did not start laying last year...so she was the first to start this year.  I guess we should give Loki's girls names, only one is named Athena so far...and this is not Athena.  Thor does occasionally mate with one of the other girls, but we should be able to tell the difference with his babies, they should have brown eyes like Thor...and the girls...I think.