Doing the Shuffle

Written by Prospector....

OK, this may be hard to follow, Bear with me.

Back in the fall, we recieved six Silver Pencilled Wyandotts (SPW). They have been housed together (2 roos, 4 girls) in the Coop-de-Ville

We had 3 Chanty hens in our other coop -  the TajMahChicken, along with three retired laying hens.

In the  basement we had a very sick Chanty Roo sharing a dog kennel with a very loving Americauna hen. We really loved that roo and that hen, and they loved each other.

Loved (past tense) because the roo was sick beyond hope, and is now an ex-rooster, dispatched this afternoon to the great beyond by the axe of judgement.

With the rooster gone, the Americauna was left alone. She needed a buddy. One of the SPW roos was assigned to the role today. He has been moved into the basement with the Americauna hen. We didn't want to introduce her to another flock alone, or she woulda got beat up pretty bad.

That left the other SPW roo with 4 girls, and no controls on breeding, so we split 2 hens away from his flock, and moved them into the TajMahChicken, awaiting the future re-introduction of the SPW roo that is currently being buddy to the Americauna. This made the Taj far fuller than the CoopDeVille.

To balance things out, we moved the 3 Chanty hens over to the Coop DeVille such that now our arrangement is...

Coop De Ville - 3 SPWs, 3 Chantys
TajMahChicken - 2 SPW hens, 1 ISA, 1 Black Sex Link, 1 RIR
Basement - 1 SPW Roo, 1 Americauna

Add to all this that we now have 3 SPW chicks and 3 Buff Orp chicks in the brooder, and 20 eggs (12 Cuckoo Marans, 4 SPW, 4 AmericaunaXChanty) in the 'bator, and it could get to being an interesting spring trying to integrate flocks. My next big move will be to set the chicks into a brooder in the basement near the Americauna in the hopes that she adopts them and they form a flock strong enough to stand up out there. What fun.