Say Hello to "Big Boy"

This is how we found Big Boy this morning. Looks as though he has had a run-in with Eyebrows the older cockrel. Eyebrows is no longer man enough to fertilize the hens and so Big Boy is doing a wonderful job, much to the disappointment of Eyebrows.

You can tell if a cockrel is fertile by..........wait for it.................looking at his legs, yes that is correct. A fertile young cockrel has very red scales on his legs and an elderly cockrel, like Eyebrows has none or very few. Eyebrows is the former!!

Sadly Eyebrows does not agree with Big Boy doing all the treading on the girls and this is the first time we have ever seen such results from the two males' anger!

I think we are going to have to cull soon, because we have at least another three cockrels from the last two batches of chicks. This is the hardest part of keeping hens. Alan says, lets get rid of all the boys, but they are so wonderful to have around and they do look after the girls too.

Fingers crossed.
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