Hello Good Looking

We have finally got to the point where we are ready to start breeding meat birds, so we found the handsome fellow necessary to get the girls hearts a flutter.  He arrived two nights ago and made his presence felt.  He's very docile for us to handle (thankfully) but does like the girls (all 29 of them) to know he's arrived.

We fetched him late in the afternoon and brought him into the run in the dark.  We have the main chook house, where the other girls were all asleep, but we put him in the old chook house we brought with us from Sydney.  It has a very low roof and we hope that will put a dampener on his genetic desire to crow at an ungodly hour.  He is so large, we could only just fit him through the door, but he seemed very happy as it was similar to the place he used to sleep in his previous home.  The next morning I went dow nat 6.00am to introduce him to his new harem.  I opened the large door to find that one of the Australorp's had already met him and was tucked up there inside.  Thankfully, he didn't seem to mind.  Then with the door open, and Bruiser the Rooster just looking out, another of the smaller chickens hopped in there with him.  I tried to discourage her, but she was hell bent.  Bruiser seemed happy with the attention and didn't rip into anyone (which was a concern as is about four times the size of these girls).  Bruiser then decided it was time to hop down and explore, and when he clapped eyes on the other Light Sussex's, suddenly became all rooster-like and started strutting around and even jumped at one of the Sussex's and tugged on a few feathers to let her know what's what.  The normally bossy Sussex girls (who we thought were big until we met Bruiser) were suddenly little wall flowers - very strange.... So after more jiggying around, Bruiser decided everyone was clear who was who, he began to explore his new pad.  And that was the total sum of his integration.  So all's good in chook land (and Bruiser had at least three interludes with three different girls in his first afternoon, so I think he's happy enough).