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Coping with accidental cock-fighting
By James Julian
As someone who hasn't kept chickens for that long, I'm used to getting things wrong from time to time. This time it was a bit bloodier than usual and potentially much more serious. First a bit of background. There were 2 cockerels who have been living in the same pen in relative peace with 12 hens for the past year. One is about a year younger than the other and this is his first spring. Now I knew that they weren't going to get along forever, though I had a sneaking hope that they might as the younger one always seemed so nice. I thought there may be some warning signs of trouble brewing and so had been keeping a special eye on them as the winter ended. There weren't, so on the last day of winter I left them together as they had been for months before. Come the first day of spring, EVERYTHING changed. I turned up to feed them to find the younger cockerel hiding underneath the coop and the older one strutting round very proud of himself. On closer inspection, the younger one seemed to have taken some serious damage to his left eye. It was swollen closed and when opened, nothing much but yellow 'gluey' stuff could be seen. Fearing the worst, I put him in a broody coop with a small run to keep him quiet and separate to the others, especially older cockerel. He was down in the dumps for a few days but seemed to be eating and drinking okay, and his eye didn't seem to be infected or getting any worse. After around a week, the eye opened up again, but all that could be seen was black. Not a good sign. However, he was crowing and seemed well in himself (if standing a bit lopsided) so everything was looking up. Two weeks after his eye injury, the weather was gorgeous and spring had definitely sprung, so I let the other chickens (and cockerel) out for a nice wander round in the fields whilst I worked on a new chicken coop. I kept him in his little pen though. Suddenly, I heard an almighty racket. I could hear a version of the "I just laid an egg" clucking but much louder than normal. Running up to the coops, I found that the cockerels had decided to have a massive fight though the wire. The younger had had his comb and nostrils ripped up and had covered his pen in blood, whilst the older had blood gruesomly dripping from his beak. Happily, the younger cockerel is now well on his way to recovery and will be moving into his new, improved coop and pen with some of the lovely ladies for some serious breeding. If you are planning on keeping pet chickens it is well worth remembering this tail if you end up with more than one cockerel. Everything might be going swimmingly to start with, but one day, it will all change and they won't be the best buddies that they seemed before. |
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This intel was contributed by egoblin
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May, 2012
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