Drive-By Roosters

Friday, as I drove home from work, one of our neighbors sent me a text.
"There is a rooster loose on the trail.  R u missing 1?  R (husband) is out there now trying to wrangle it lol."
I told her that I would check our pen as soon as I got home.

Both of our roosters were safe in the pen, as I had expected.  I sent her a text back but her husband was already on his way over, with the rooster sitting on the front seat floor next to a plate full of bird seed.

He rolled down his car window and we told him that we 1) didn't want another rooster and 2) our roosters were taking their job of guarding our baby chick very seriously and would most likely try to kill this guy if we put him in our pen.  Our neighbor sighed, and drove back out the gate.  A few minutes later, we heard the rooster crowing out on the dirt road, so we knew he had been released close to where he had been caught.

If you look closely, you can see our pasture fence through the trees on the other side of the blackberry bushes.

Over the course of the evening, we got calls from other neighbors asking if the rooster was ours.  We heard it crowing during the night and in the morning, he slipped through our front gate and started walking up the driveway.  He was a young Rhode Island Red, beautiful, and not at all aggressive.  I told Brett that I was fine with it being on the property -- but he would need to stay outside the chicken pen.

Kersey, who was at our feet as we stood on the front porch, saw the rooster coming up the driveway.  She launched herself across the dry grass, barking and barreling towards it at high speed.  The rooster turned and ran back to the front gate.  Kersey watched it go, then turned and came back to the porch.  She is fine with our chickens but apparently this rooster fell into the same category as the cats who make the mistake of hopping our fence.

This morning, I learned that there are two roosters out there.  This explains why I heard crowing from one end of the pasture, and then a minute later, much further down while I was mucking.  The roosters are very young and in good health, with shiny red-black feathers and blue-black tail feathers.  In three days, they haven't moved more than a few yards from the same spot, near where the dirt road intersects the paved road.  Further up the road, are a couple of wineries.  I suspect that someone dropped off the two roosters on their way up the hill.  The roosters aren't from around here; if they were, they would have made their way back home by now (there is truth to the saying that chickens return home to roost).  I am surprised that they haven't been killed by the coyotes or raccoons that frequent our area.  We heard coyotes last night, close by, and I thought they would get the roosters for sure.  But, no, they were still crowing loudly early this morning.  This is the second time that an unwanted animal has been left on the dirt road that circles behind our property. ...so rude, ...and so cruel.