Cock-A-Doodle Doo

Well, its time for the latest chicken news.  The chicken palace coop is coming along quite nicely.  Still much to be done, but the chickens are feeling quite at home.  They enjoyed independence day this week with their very own chicken pen in which to roam and peck with no worries about those pesky hawks that have been in the area.

 Their first venture into the outdoors:

 Josette gets very excited about the chickens:

 Finn loves to feed them still:

 Just a couple of weeks ago, I posted about the chickens beginning to develop their combs.  I thought it was interesting that some of them seemed more developed than others, but chalked it up to normal variation in growth and maturity.  Then, last week, Sean came in early in the morning after taking Lily for her outing and said, "I think one of our hens is trying to crow!"  Well, upon closer inspection we have two "hens" that are each a little bigger than the rest, seem to strut just a little bit more, and have a much more developed and redder combs, and yep, they are working on that "cock-a-doodle-doo"  So, when it seemed a little funny that we ordered 15 hens and they sent us 17, maybe the sexing was a little difficult.  Without further ado, meet our two roosters:

This is Cogburn (named by Sean, who knows the reference?)

 And, this is Remi (also named by Sean):

Being the "fly by the seat of our pants" chicken owners that we are, I had no idea what we should do about owning two roosters.  I know a lot of folks choose to sacrifice them.  But, I have several neighbors who enjoy having roosters and let them crow away.  I did some reading and it turns out that roosters can be beneficial and fun.  Roosters will help to alert the hens to predators and try to protect them.  If they grow up with each other, they are typically fine to be in the same flock and will develop their own pecking order.  Should be interesting and yet another learning experience for us!