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Dianne:

We recently took in three of the cutest little roosters from the Nevada Humane Society. The strange thing about miniatures is that they make you say "Awwww, now isn't that sweet?" Take these three little roosters. They are all strikingly beautiful and tiny and have the sweetest little crows. But once you have been bitten — no, I mean really painfully bitten — you will not take the size as anything but a deception.

We named the birds after silent film directors; Buster is a Game Bantam who is small, fast and wire-like. Chaplin is a Oriental Bantam who sits with his tail fanned up in a seemingly meditative posture, and Fritz is a White Silky Bantam who has a strong desire for food which gets him petted much more then he would like. (Note: We ended up changing Chaplin's name to Miyagi because Chaplin just didn't fit him.)

The birds spent the first night in my bathroom in a cage on top of Ginger's. In the morning, they set to crowing and Ginger sat quietly giving me the evil eye. That afternoon we set up the isolation pen, and the boys were moved out of Ginger's domain. When evening came and Ginger returned to her room, she had plenty to say and pecked at my ankles to emphasize her anger. She gets enough grief from Al, who is totally enamered of this beautiful young lady and won't leave her alone all day.

The new birds would allow me to pick them up at first but over a few days they started to peck and become a little more aggressive. Buster came to us crowing and now the others have also found their voices. For the first week I locked them all together in a large dog carrier each night for safety, but they would fight so badly that Mark said they would be fine loose in the predator-proof isolation pen. This has made them all happier and also helped Fritz and Chaplin to grow more confident, not letting Buster bully them anymore.

To most farmers, roosters are expendable since you only need one rooster for a flock of hens. Most of the chickens set loose in the desert, abandoned to humane societies or killed in the spring by owners are roosters. The U.S. egg industry kills billions of boy babies each year. Imagine what it would be like to be killed because of your sex. The next time you hear a rooster cockadoodling think of how lucky that bird is to be alive and how sad it is that so many others were killed.

We will try to intregrate our three musketeers this weekend. If things don't work out in the big bird flock we will  build a mini bird pen and coop for them to live in. Roosters are a challenge but what would life be if not for the little challenges we all get to face? Writing this I can hear Al with his big bird call, then I hear the little birds answer; back and forth the sounds of the farm on a sunny July afternoon.

Right to left: Buster, Chaplin (aka Miyagi) and Fritz enjoy breakfast together.

The three bantams roost on top of the dog carrier that used to

hold them locked together during the night.