Update on Henry

My worries about gentle Henry are over. The chickens resolved the issue themselves and didn't include me in on the decision. I had decided I was going to keep him in a separate pen and was gathering materials to make one, but then I saw Rocky take off after Henry and chase him into the woods. I had a funny feeling that I wasn't going to see him again when I saw the chase go down.

We had company, I didn't follow them until after our company left and then I went out into the woods and called and called for Henry. He never came back. I waited a couple days, going out into the woods every few hours hoping to see him, but either Rocky killed him or something else snatched him up. It's been 10 days now and no sign of him.

I'll miss you Henry.

With Henry out of the picture, Rocky's new target is the other Speckled Sussex rooster you see on the far right, in the pix above. He's kind of mean and he pecks your feet when you walk by. He will chase you and peck you and when I say "peck", I mean he pecks. Hard. He has broken skin and left bruises where he pecks me or the girls. He's a stubborn one, that one, and refuses to get run off, though Rocky tries repeatedly to chase him off. I keep him separate in a large animal crate we have, and let him out when the other chickens are off in the field out of sight.

I called a neighbor that I know, who hunts and processes his own deer. I thought he might know how to butcher a chicken, but he says it's been over 50 years since he helped his Granddaddy butcher a chicken. Another neighbor sells eggs, so I'm thinking they may also butcher their own chickens, so I hope to go over there one day this week and introduce myself and ask.

I think in the future, I'll only purchase female chickens and leave those ornery males out of the equation. You don't need males for eggs, hens will lay eggs, but if you want them to hatch, then you need the rooster to fertilize the eggs.

I am gathering materials I need to build a fence around the chicken coop. They wander pretty far, and though they always return at night, they will soon start to lay eggs and I have heard enough stories about hens laying eggs every place but the nesting boxes. I don't want to look all over our 15 acres for eggs, so a fence it is. It will have two separate pens so I can rotate pens and let the grass regrow from all their pecking and digging. Ideally, there should be 4 pens, to rotate every week and then each pen will have 3 weeks of regrowth before the chickens go back into that pen. My issues are cost, so I need to figure out how much the fencing materials will cost me, before I make my final decision on how many pens there will be.