Being a Leghorn, Spike stood out from the dinner chicks who are all Welsh Blacks (Australorp x Indian Game). The Other CHap (OC) who does the dinner chickens with us, quite took to Spike and his antics. Spike has cartook comb and wattles; he's funny; he's a character. He wanted to keep Spike.
We had previousy decided that we would keep two flocks, one with breeding Girls and a cockerel, and the other with the small Girls (like Norman, NotNorman, Siouxsie) and the Old Ladies (like Mrs). Actually, Mrs and Norman etc are the same age, but Mrs looks her age whereas Norman and her sisters look forever young. This would prevent any risk of injury, and would mean that the Old Ladies didn't have to suffer a cockerel attentions.
We explained that Spike wouldn't make a good cockerel for a dinner flock. Spike continued to endear himself, and in the end we agreed that we could possibly keep Spike as a companion for the Old Ladies half of the flock. He's a very lightweight bird, so at least there would be less risk of injury.
Around this time Spike started escaping from the Dinner half of the allotment into the Old Ladies half of the allotment. Every day we would catch him and move him back. We clipped his wings. He carried on getting out. In the end, we left him in there,and he's been a very proud boy ever since.
I'm not sure that the
DH came back from the Allotment on Friday, chuckling away to himself. He'd arrived at the allotment to find that Spike and 5 of his 7 ladies were all sitting on top of the Coop. Now, our coops are very high. They are on legs so that we don't have to bend down to clean them out, and the top is waaay abpve my head height. The Girls don't get up on the roof - ever - and the thought of Spike and his harem sitting in a line up there made me laugh out loud. They must like him really then.
Sadly Mrs wasn't part of the roof party, she's too stiff to be able to get up there. Not sure why Norah (or Batty, DH wasn't sure which of them) wasn't there too, maybe she was busy laying an egg.
