Los Gallos
So back in October, 2014, a predator, likely a stray dog, got into our yard and decimated our flock of chickens. We immediately set about restoring the flock with the purchase of 10 Rhode Island Red chicks (supposedly all pullets), 6 laying hens ( 2 reds, 3 Transylvanian naked necks aka turkens, and a sex link hen), to which we also added a box of 6 straight run chicks (unsexed). Long story short, 2 of the RI reds and 3 of the free chicks matured into roosters. Having had a bad experience with Kellogg, the rooster in the previous flock, we had arranged with the local feed store to take any unwanted rooster from the present group. We duly loaded 3 of the young roosters into a carrier and dispatched them to the feed store. This left us with dos gallos in hope that should there be another predator incident, the roosters would sacrifice themselves and minimize losses to the hens. Another reason for keeping the roosters is to keep the hens happy except our two immature roosters get attacked by the hens they are trying to mount, fully illustrating the meaning of the term “hen-pecked.”
This rooster is named Meredith. As a chick, it was smaller than the rest and a lovely shade of grey–thinking it was a pullet, we named it after one of our favorite tv surgeons, Meredith Grey (Grey’s Anatomy).
Obviously, our sexing skills are inadequate. But Meredith is a fine-looking bird. Very immature and frequently beaten and bitten by the older, mature hens. Such is life in the chicken yard.
Now the other rooster was larger than the other chicks acquired together and we correctly guessed he would mature into a rooster.
He is very mellow and afraid of us humans, a good trait in a rooster. He is pretty aggressive in trying to mount any hen he can, and frequently gets abused by his attempted paramours. Now the evolution of his name requires some background. Many years ago, we had a white Persian cat named Ranjit Singh, Lion of the Punjab. My son Chris, about 7 years old at the time, called the cat Whitey-pants. As can be seen in the picture, this rooster has large areas of white on his body and one day my wife, laughing as she watched his unsuccessful attempt to couple with an older hen, said “Whitey-pants just blew it!” So now this rooster shall ever be called “Ranjit-doodle-do, Rooster of the hen yard.”
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