We ordered some heirloom breed chicks - Egyptian Fayoumis - with our spring chick order. The reason we like heirloom varieties is that we generally want to preserve biodiversity as we believe monoculture is dangerous and makes us all more vulnerable to disease and famine.
But ... we also just think rare breeds are cool. :)
So we ordered these birds, and the ideas was that we'd have one rooster and three hens. Once we knew which was which, we'd give a breeding pair to my mother, who lives in the country and was interested in trying to breed them. We'd keep two hens, since we are urban dwellers.
The breed is known for maturing quickly, so we weren't too surprised when we got our first little cock a doodle doo. The little rooster sat there, and seemed just as surprised by the noise as we were. But soon, we started hearing a lot of crowing. None of our neighbors complained, thank goodness, but we had ten crows in a row at 5am!
It turned out there were TWO roosters. Since one chick died early on, that left us with two roosters and one hen. So we had to send them all to my mother's house. They were beautiful birds, and we miss them already. Hopefully they will breed and do well, and maybe we can have a hen next year.
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