With Bob in jail Mildred seems to be recovering. Saturday there was a medium sized egg in the next box she usually uses, and I'm pretty sure it was hers - I don't think the Reds are quite ready to start laying yet.

The Reds continue to show different personalities than the Rosses. These birds love to perch, on the highest available place, of course. On a morning early last week I opened the door to the coop to see only Mildred and one Red inside. The other three were nowhere to be seen. When I looked to my right and up, they were perched on the top of the fence that divides the coop from the tack room (not officially a tack room, but we keep the goat harnesses there, along with the hay and food for the goats and chickens).

Unfortunately, when they faced the inside of the coop, their defecate would drop down into the tack room, ironically enough on top of some plastic buckets I kept in the corner for various and sundry purposes. Time to put up some of the chicken wire I had bought for just that purpose. I just hadn't done it because it had been cold and the Rosses weren't into perching at all.

Since I took Friday off for another reason, I went out and did it in the morning in the space of about half an hour. That took care of that problem, but now the Reds have decided that their favorite perch is the top of the goat gate, which is about six inches from the stall door. So sometime next week I'm going to put in a higher perch for them so I don't have to shoo them off the goat gate when I want to go into the coop and work.

The floor next boxes have also taken a beating. I'm thinking about getting one of those five gallon plastic buckets and fixing it up. Several folks on the Backyard Chickens Forum have used them as nest boxes with great success and they can be had cheaply from restaurants and bakeries. Plus, Mildred is a little big for the cramped 12 x 12 x 12 box she favors now.

Last night I let the Reds out of their isolation cage, but not after some thought first. Mildred was looking really beaten down, and I wanted to give her more recovery time away from Bob. I also figured that the Reds, being half her size, wouldn't be nearly the problem to her that Bob is, even if she ends up low on the pecking order.

So I locked Bob in another part of the barn. I put Mildred in a nesting box, where I thought she'd feel safe and stay (she did). Then I opened the door and let the Reds out into the coop. Getting them out of isolation took no encouragement. They were ready to explore and were delighted with all the old hay and scratch I'd put down for them to pick through. Then I caught Bob and put him in jail. He took it in stride, and made a big show out of trying to empty the feeder I gave him all in one sitting.

The Reds have a totally different personality than the Rosses do. They do a lot of chattering and they busy themselves checking out the four corners of the coop. They're very active, but that could be because they're small and a little young yet. The Rosses are so big that they never messed with any of the perches I put up. One of the Reds fluttered up on one within 15 seconds of my opening the door.

This morning Mildred looked better but not fully recovered. Bob was taking being in jail in stride. He had food and water all to himself, after all. And the Reds just couldn't wait to see what I was brining for them to peck at.

Obviously the Rosses are big and slow because they're not really intended to live long. Even if the two I have were on a production farm, Bob would burn himself out early fertilizing eggs, and Mildred would have a short career as a layer.

I think it would be interesting to try and create a giant breed of red using the Ross to get the size. However, there are some roadblocks:

1) Lack of experience on my part (I'm just getting started on this whole thing),

2) Lack of facilities,

3) Lack of vision - there are some Ross traits I don't want, and I need to know what some other Red traits are before I start something like this,

4) At this point, I'm not willing to risk having any of the Reds crushed to death by Bob's attempts to fertilize their eggs

Maybe in a couple of years. In the meantime I have a couple of things to think about... a private yard for Bob and a smaller roo for the girls? Or is it time to break out the charcoal and grill?

I've been busy with other pursuits and didn't have time to make entries, so essentially here's what has happened.

Mildred spent a few days in jail by herself and really perked up. At the beginning of this week, I let her out, and Bob jumped her three times in the first five minutes. In the evening she was in the goat pen and didn't want to move again, so I locked her back up.

I let her out again last night and by this morning she was looking bedraggled again. But that's all right. There's another distraction. This morning my wife and I went and picked up four pullets - two New Hampshire Reds, a Rhode Island Red and a Production Red. We came back and I cleaned out Mildred's jail and put them in.

Bob, who was in the goat pen with Mildred, knew something was up right away because he heard the Reds clucking. He started crowing nonstop for about fifteen minutes. Finally he came over, looked inside the coop and started cooing at them. The goats scared him off, but he was back in a few minutes. He went inside this time and peeked at them, then started chittering up a storm.

He's spent the rest of the afternoon running from the coop to check on the Reds to the goat barn, where Mildred is hiding. That if nothing else should use up some of that extra energy he's been directing Mildred's way.

I also did a couple of chicken chores. I nailed up the ladder to the high nest boxes where the Rosses don't go, and I raised the floor nest boxes off the ground with a couple of old bricks. Put up a low roost in the back of the coop and installed an extra light with a reflector that will go on a timer sometime soon.

In about a week I'll let the Reds go and see what happens. The woman I bought them from said he has (or was it had?) a large rooster like Bob, and she pointed out a few ex-chickens in the snow that had been crushed by his amorous advances. So I'm going to have to keep an eye on things. I may have to get a smaller roo and use Bob as a watch Rooster or something.

I hadn't had the chance to tell my daughter that Mildred was being locked up for her own good, so she let her out when she closed the chickens up for me yesterday. No problem, I put her back in before I went in the house - I had to take some supplies out and decided to check on them.

One thing from this morning. I left Mildred with almost a gallon of water yesterday evening. When I went to change the water this morning, it was all gone. There was no sign of a spill. It wasn't frozen inside the tank. It was gone.

Do you suppose she drank all that over the course of the night? Maybe one reason she looked so haggard is that Bob was keeping her from getting to the main water can.

Yeah, this quarantine is a good thing.

Bob is one unhappy rooster right now.

My daughter closed up the chickens last night and commented that Mildred looked pretty beaten up. She's still recovering from her wounds, but when I went and opened the coop up this morning, she didn't want to move.

I think the problem is, besides Bob's amorous advances, is that she also happens to be the bottom cluck in a pecking order of two. She looked all disheveled this morning, and didn't want to move. She seemed overly intimidated by Bob's presence, so I took action.

Inside the coop I have an old wire dog crate that I kept the two chickens in while they were just starting to feather out. I did that for about a week so they'd get the idea that this stall of the barn is their home, and then I opened it up. I kept it in place because I figured that it would be handy when I brought in new chickens - they'd be able to meet Bob and Mildred without getting seriously beaten up. I even fixed it up a little with fresh straw for when I get some new pullets, hopefully soon.

Anyway, I picked Mildred up and put her inside, then gave her some food and water and locked her up. When I did, she perked up right away and started to enthusiastically eat. Did she sense that she was separated from Bob? I don't know.

Bob, however, was immediately aware that something was amiss. He went over to the bars of the cage and lowered his head, making odd sounds at Mildred like he knew he couldn't get to her. Angry? Frustrated? Both? When I left, he was standing right next to the crate, crowing up a storm.

There's only one bad thing about this arrangement that I can think of: there's no nest box if she decides to lay an egg. If the urge hits, I'm sure she'll make some kind of nest, though - and the important thing right now is that she's not going to be molested for a while.

I'll give her a few days to recover and then bring her back out. Perhaps when the new pullets arrive - Mildred out, pullets in. That ought to shake things up and confuse Bob even more.

That's the plan, anyway.

Another egg today, collected by my daughter. "It was about this big," she said, holding her fingers apart. I couldn't really see the size since I wasn't that close to her. I had nothing to compare the size to, nor did I see it, because my wife gave the last four eggs to my in-laws.

That's okay. More where those came from.

Still working on increasing the population. Perhaps this weekend.

Correction to yesterday's post: the egg was a large at best. Since we ate the other eggs collected, there was nothing to compare it to.

Yesterday I collected one egg that probably was a jumbo. It looked like it was straining the bounds of the Extra Large carton we've been putting them in. This one I thought was speckled with dark brown, but it washed off when I cleaned the egg. Probably stuff accumulated when it passed through her system.