Our rooster, Chirparoo, died a few weeks ago. We noticed that he was walking with a slight limp during the day and tried to treat him that evening with some pain meds, but he didn’t survive the night.

Hens are usually experience less stress with a rooster in the flock because the rooster provides protection and helps keep the peace. So we were in the market for a new rooster.

Luckily, someone nearby had a few extra roosters they were looking to part with. They had tried to hatch eggs from their flock, hoping for additional hens. They ended up with 5 roosters from 5 eggs (pretty unlucky).

And, to our luck, they happened to have children who played with the roosters from right after hatching, so they are very used to being handled and are friendly.

We stopped by for a visit and ended up selecting two roosters – one full size black rooster and one bantam mille fleur rooster. The bantam rooster is named “Moe” (named by our toddler). The large rooster still doesn’t have a name.

After a quarantine period, the roosters integrated right into the flock. They are very friendly to us and haven’t attacked us or charged at us at all.

They grew up in a large caged run, but have adapted just fine to our more free range setup. There were a few hiccups the first few days of being free range for the large rooster as he struggled to figure out his own way back into the coop around sundown. But after a couple days, he picked it up and has been fine with it since.