Someone Crowed!

Despite a few bumps along my path, I think the chicken keeping has been going pretty well this past month.  The chicks have been eating both the commercial feed and the seed/grain mixture I am providing, they are growing into very pretty young adult chickens and finally, last night, they figured out how to go into the coop all by themselves.  (Thanks to someone telling me to put a light bulb on a timer in the coop…like clockwork, they marched themselves in there as the sun began to set.) 

The bumps are turning out to be a bit significant…however.

Yesterday morning I discovered one of the chicks is being pecked and was bloodied.  So, I had to remove that chick and put it in the brooder where it is warm and I can nurse it’s wound.  The poor thing is beside itself being isolated from the others.  But, at the feed store, where I went to purchase a topical treatment, they told me the other chickens will keep picking where there is blood until they literally pull it apart…Ew.

Also, yesterday, as I was dealing with the injured chicken, someone crowed!  Yep…stretched out his neck and let a big old “Cockadoodle doo” out!  I live in the city limits and by law cannot keep roosters.  And, now that I’m looking at these chickens a little more closely, I’m thinking I may have 3 or 4 roosters out of the seven chickens.  Now I have to make sure and then find them new homes outside the city limits. 

And then there’s the issue of them standing out in this driving rain getting soaked.  Why won’t they go into the coop where it is warm, dry and there is both food and water?  I guess I’ll go help them out and remind them that warm and dry is better than cold and wet.