Rooster Cogburn settles in

Mr. Rooster Cogburn, our new Americauna rooster, has been settling in nicely over the weekend. I've already integrated him with the rest of our flock, because in the winter we currently only have one water fount that we can thaw out daily, so we really didn't have any option to segregate him longer term like I would have otherwise liked. Although when we ordered our chicks I had thought about ordering a male, or one breed straight run, so that we would have one breed that we could hatch chicks and replace our flock with in the future. My husband, working night shifts, wasn't keen on the thought of having a rooster crowing at daybreak, waking him up, so we ordered just females.

I was surprised when last week he so readily said yes to a free rooster, and I'm just hoping that he'll stay interested in baby chicks and the ability to produce more layers, and not get purturbed if Rooster Cogburn starts crowing early in the morning! So far I've only heard him crow once, and it was almost noon, so I'm hoping he'll stay under the radar for a bit!

When I thought about getting a rooster, the americauna was the first of our breeds that came to mind. In terms of having chicks and becoming more self-sufficient, I would want to keep our breeds pure. With the exception of the Americauna we have, the rest of the breeds are all brown egg layers. Time will tell if I can differentiate breeds from the brown eggs we get, but to keep things safe this first go around, an Americauna rooster would make raising pure americauna chicks as easy as picking only blue/green eggs to incubate.

I think in the future, if we keep enjoying having chickens and want to expand and raise more chicks, I would have 2 flocks of 5-10 birds. Having a couple different breeds in each flock, and a rooster with each flock thats mates are the only producers of their color of egg in that flock, would mean I could have sustaining populations of several breeds. We'll see how that works out long term, but once we have a larger coop (in the next few years maybe?), it would be more possible. I guess it depends on which breeds we end up liking best from the 8 we bought last summer, and whether we do another round of breeds before selecting our final breeds that we want to work with.

I think Rooster Cogburn is settling in nicely with our 13 girls, don't you? I'm linking up today with the Homestead Barn Hop, head on over and see what has been happening on other homesteads!