A Chicken Story - part 2

I know you’re all dying to hear what happened next, so here goes! The chickens were pretty well established with their two coops and the run and in December we left them in the hands of a capable chicken-loving friend while we went to Jeremy’s mom’s house for Christmas.
(just a video of happy chickens)


We got back on the 26th and were debriefing with our friend. He had a fine time watching the girls (and boys!). But, he said, at one point some of them escaped. He was pretty sure he’d gotten them all back. We decided to do a quick head count to be sure. 1, 2, 3, 4… Jeremy counted and was stunned: there were 25 chickens!!! We had never counted the chicks when they arrived. The hatchery must have sent five extra ‘just in case.’ So we have 25 chickens after all! Twenty-one hens and four roosters.
Four roosters that were starting to get a bit noisy, as you can imagine. I can’t remember when they started crowing, but they’ve been at it a couple months now for certain. Sometimes two or three would crow at the same time, which kind of makes me laugh. I don’t know why. And they always seem to crow more when we’re around, like they’re defending their territory or asserting their rights. We haven’t had any neighbor complaints yet, so that’s good!

One day a couple weeks ago I was walking by the coop and I happened to glance in. Most of the chickens were clustered together in the smaller run and I could see all four of the roosters together. They’re quite beautiful, with black and white coloring, iridescent green feathers, big tail feathers, huge wattles and combs, etc. Then, one of them let out a big crow. But it wasn’t one of the roosters I saw in the run. It came from somewhere else. We have five roosters! Not four!
Geez. Obviously with 25 chickens there are just too many for us to bother and figure out what is there. Actually, it’s too hard to get them in one spot and too hard to keep track! I just keep thinking there are 5 of each, 5 of each. But after I insisted that we had only four female leghorns the other day, then Jeremy counted six, I finally got it. They must have sent six of each bird instead of five of each. “Just in case.”

You may be thinking that’s the end of the story – but just you wait. There’s more to come!