Nickname(s):

Red

Breed:

Rhode Island Red x Mystery Barred Hen

Gender:

Rooster

Siblings:

Eleven “Levy, Noelan, Ruby, Hazel

Bio:

Rederick is, hands down, my sweetest boy. He’s been bounced around the chicken yard quite a bit trying to find a place where he fit but he’s finally found a home and a family where he is happy. Red came from my very first group of chicks that I hatched. He was actually the very first one to hatch and, therefore, he’s technically my first chicken. When he came out of his egg he already had a massive comb and I just knew he was a boy. Most of those chicks actually turned out to be boys.

Rederick and the rest of his hatchmates grew up together until the he and the other boys reached rooberty (rooster puberty). At that point there were too many hormones and too few hens to keep everyone together any longer so Rederick and four of the other boys moved across the yard to a bachelor coop leaving just Levy (who was the head rooster at the time) with the hens. Unfortunately, without Levy to keep order, the other boys needed to renegotiate their pecking order and things didn’t go well for Rederick. After a very bloody fight, Red had to move back in with his brother Levy and the hens he hatched with.

Red and Levy got along great, sharing the duties of caring for the flock perfectly, until one day they didn’t. In the dead of winter one day, Levy decided that he didn’t want Rederick in the flock anymore and, once again, there was a fight that left Rederick bleeding heavily. The poor guy has been my most injured rooster in addition to being the sweetest. When I brought him into the house to treat his wounds I realized that he had gotten ridiculously thin in a very short amount of time. I think Levy had been guarding the feeder and not letting Red eat for a while before he decided to fight him out of the flock. Red ate enough for four roosters for a few weeks and, thankfully, started gaining weight back pretty quickly.

Unfortunately, since he had now been kicked out of both his original coop with Levy AND the bachelor coop, Red had nowhere to go. I made him a short term home in our garage and got to work building him a small coop to get him by until I could build something larger in the spring and get him his own flock of ladies. Over the winter he spent quite a bit of time indoors with us since he was all alone. He bonded with our dog, Renji, during that time and the two of them would sleep together beside the wood stove. You couldn’t eat ANYTHING in our house without a dog and a rooster at your feet waiting for their share!

Once spring came, I started building a full size coop for Red and I ordered a group of ready-to-lay Bovans Brown pullets from the local feed store to be his ladies. The girls showed up in April and, after they finished their quarantine period, I moved Red’s coop directly beside theirs so they could get to know each other. I had intended to leave them side by side for a week or two and then try to introduce them but they each loved each other so much right from the start that they only lived side by side for a day before I let Rederick go meet them. It was like they’d always been together from the second he set foot in their coop and they’ve lived together happily ever since.

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