Roosters

I have been sitting around the past several evenings while my little dog, Xena, was outside to do her business and used this time to observe my chickens.  Chickens have, upon close study and observation, a very complicated social structure.  We currently have four roosters.  I would like to introduce said roosters to you one at a time.  They form the governance of the group.  Firstly the top ranking rooster I call Big Red.  He's a Rhode Island Red (RIR).  He is the biggest and most dominate of all and is seldom, if ever, challenged.  Big Red is one of the group of chickens that came to the farm first.  We refer to them as the "Tractor Supply Chickens" because we bought them, well I bought them from there.  They were straight run and you just reached in and picked a chick.  Two of them were a little ruddier than the others so I selected them.  I was happy that I ended up with one RIR rooster and one RIR hen.  Poor Little Red, the hen was among those lost to the Coyote raid of 2011 that killed over half of the chickens.  RIP Little Red.  Anyway, I digress, we are talking about Big Red today.

On any given day one can watch Big Red leading around, shepherding, his harem of hens.  Big Red also has his subordinate roosters and the pecking order is clearly defined.  The general argument that I hear that is anti rooster is that roosters are only interested in one thing and that's truth right there but they are so much more.  Their role in the flock is to guard and protect.  Big Red uses not only his voice in various clucks, perts, and whistles, but certain body language to influence his harem and subordinates.  It all begins in the morning when they are let out of the chicken house to free range.  The first order of the morning is to hustle up and feed up from the scratch feed that is cast out to them by the Primary Food Source (me the momma) so Big Red runs up the hill, the flock in tow to head to where I cast out the scratch feed.  He clucks and perts to them all the way up the hill.