Covey Chronicles

[scyllarus]

Flan has decided to become broody again, seemingly at random. Sigh. Dang hen. It's so hot right now that we could honestly just incubate the eggs outside and probably get a good hatch if it wasn't for the night-time drop in temp. She's the one who gets to come inside and greet the new chicks because I keep hoping she'll decide she wants to be a mother, though it's never lined up very well with her deciding to sit, so she's never 'claimed' any chicks. We're not hatching another batch for a while, so she's just SOL for now.

I finally gave up and moved the rest of the juveniles to the main cage so we could get the chicks out of the brooder. Now it's just a waiting game - assuming we got 50% males, the plan was to remove all the roos except for 1-2 and then give a covey away so we'd be back to about 16-20 birds in a 24 sq ft space....until the new hatch gets big enough, anyway. Alas, the new babies were quite vigorous and needed more space, so plans have gotten sped up - good thing there's a farm swap coming up. Hopefully we'll be able to sell or trade the extra roos, but if not we'll have to probably cull them this coming week. They'll be about 7-8 weeks old, so they have most of their growth.

 

[scyllarus]

I wish the juveniles would find their feet already. Then I could make real decisions as to whom to keep vs whom to get rid of - the roos would finally be obvious with their crowing and mating, the hens would start showing their true personalities...

We're thinking to keep some chunky hens who are easy-going in the flock and friendly towards humans and a couple of roos who are at least on par with Tidbit, but it's not really clear who's going to be like what yet. Sigh.

 

[scyllarus]

And a funny post in which I indulge my anthropomorphization of my birds...

I do love how silly my favorites are - Pudding reminds me of a proper Victorian schoolmarm, very severe and haughty. No one messes with her. Mousse is a softer lady, more timid and sweet compared to Pudding - though they do get along well. An alternate universe of Matilda in which Ms Honey and Ms Trunchbull get along, haha. Flan is basically a grandma - she's so bad at pecking for treats and she seems rather slow and sedate, but she's constantly broody and very sweet. Dixie is a bossy girl who loves treats more than anyone else and will literally jump for them. Sugar is Dixie's sister and she's a little more interested in doing her own thing than getting treats. And, of course, there's Tidbit. I think he's really rather dapper and thoughtful, an ideal husband to his many wives - if he was a human, he'd bring them chocolates and let them eat the fries off his plate. He'd get up at night to check the weird noise. He'd offer a back rub if they weren't feeling up to getting mounted. This particular quail roo helps me understand why all the dang chicken keepers get attached to roosters, because in all honesty, most quail roo are awful.