Bruce Lends a Hand.

Bruce Lends a Hand

Our flock was over two years old and our only chick was a rooster who just couldn’t cohabitate. With the two angry roosters wreaking chaos all across the social structure on the flock, it was small wonder that no one was inclined to try hatching eggs again! Herself and I had a passing thought about buying a couple of young hens … pullets, really … to refresh our flock with young life. We had just begun to consider breeds and sources when the trouble between the roosters had come to a head.

But right at that moment, Bruce reached out to me.

Do you remember our friend Bruce? He’s the gentleman from old farm stock with acreage but no livestock. He’s the gentleman to whom my wife and I suggested that he one day start his own flock and we’d be glad to help. He’s the gentleman who rescued the homeless chickens from the Bayonne area and lo and behold started his own flock in short order. With four roosters and four hens.

Before I carry on with our own tale, let’s check in with Bruce, shall we? This is based on memory of the things he told me back in 2015 when he had gotten his rescue chickens and how it played out. If anything is very far off the mark, hopefully he’ll stop by to correct the record.

By the way, Bruce is also an ace photographer and the following pictures are his handiwork of his own flock!

 

First, some politics of his own needed to be sorted out:

 

After the initial dust ups, I believe he told me that he culled one roo and managed to trade another for a couple of hens (would LOVE to know how he pulled that off!)

So his flock was now (as memory serves) six hens and two roos. Not perfect, but improved. And with a lot more land than us, his flock could roam more and stay out of each other’s way!

Then, by the spring of 2016 (about the same time we began having our issues) his hen Lacey gave birth to two baby barnyard mutts …

And aren’t they gorgeous!:

 

But that wasn’t all. He was enjoying his flock SO MUCH that he decided to order TWO DOZEN Jersey Giant chicks to raise … keeping some and selling some others.

Here they are out of the brood box and into the mini coop until sold and/or big enough to join his flock.

 

He offered us first dibs on any we wanted and we figured we’d very much like two. We chose two because we do have limited space, but only one would be lonely and have a hard time fitting in.

For those of you who are slightly less chicken obsessed than I, a word about ‘Jersey Giants’. They are a heritage breed developed right here in New Jersey in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s as a meat bird. They are the largest of the chicken breeds and it was thought that they would be a cheaper replacement for the turkey. Only it didn’t work out that way. Jersey Giants are impressive birds, but they are slow growers and reportedly not good layers. Being slow growers means that the feed to growth ratio is not economically viable and thus they are only popular with backyard chicken keepers rather than any viable industrial use. Never the less, they persist as a breed. We would not have chosen this breed on our own but we certainly wanted to encourage Bruce and we were also comforted by the fact that these birds had been raised in a great environment with a loving handler.

It did cause me to question him on his choice of breed, and true to his gentle nature, he calmly explained that he wanted to raise a more unique bird and show some New Jersey pride in the process.

Since his birds were still young, and since we were in the middle of our rooster crisis, we asked him to hold only our two until we had the issue sorted out and also to give them time to grow large enough to integrate into the flock more easily.

So, about a week after our issue had been sorted out, and the Jersey Giants now being about eight weeks old or more, June of 2016 brought our (hopefully) permanent new flock members Petunia and Lily-of-the-Valley (this is my picture, not Bruce’s … he takes much better pictures!)