Well, I should've known better....

I should've known better when my friend asked if I wanted to buy some fancy breed chickens from a friend of hers. It was a pair -- a rooster and a hen. That right there should have stopped me. I don't need a rooster. I have a rooster. A good rooster. Then she said the rooster has a big straight comb. There's another tip-off that this was a bad idea. I can't keep roosters with big combs because they get frostbite in the winter. My first rooster had a big comb and it froze off every winter, no matter what I did to try to keep it warm. Short of knitting him a little hat, there wasn't anything I could do. I swore I wasn't going to get another big combed chicken again.

In spite of these two big problems, I picked up the chickens on Saturday. I paid a good deal of money for them which really should have stopped me right there. I am not much of a chicken farmer so spending money on chickens for me is kind of a waste. It doesn't really matter what kind of fancy breed they are, I am not up to the caliber of chicken person to really be spending anything on a bird. Well, against my reservations, I paid the lady and took the birds home.

Once home, I should have known to clip their wings. Both of them looked very game-bird-ish and from my experience any light breed, game type birds won't stay in my fencing. They tend to be flighty and fly right over my 5' chicken fence. I decided to wait and see if they would be like that, rather than taking my own advice and just clipping them. I also should have known that they would need a few days of acclimation being locked up with my chickens before being allowed to free-range it in the coop. They just moved here and don't know the neighborhood so a few days in confinement would be ideal. Well, yesterday I got lazy and rather than cleaning their cage, I let them out with the rest of the birds.

Well, you can probably guess what happened next.... When I did chores this morning the new hen was gone and the rooster was sitting forlornly at the back of the chicken run. I looked around and didn't find her anywhere. I am hoping she is just in the woods and will come back before being eaten by a fox. Of course, if she does come back, I have no idea how to catch her. Short of getting lucky and surprising her, I can't imagine being able to get a hold of her.

Well, I should've known better.....