After Cream Puff was gone for a few weeks and her chicks were grown up, my friend called to report. My friend is tall and beautiful with a loud contagious laugh and personal energy usually associated with seismic events and explosions. She had something urgently serious to communicate.
"Cream Puff the Fierce is now Cream Puff In Love." Apparently my loaned-out C.P. had fallen terminally hard for their Barred Rock rooster, Christopher. They could not be separated. It would be a Shakespearean-level crime against chicken love to part the two of them, they were so inseparable.
"I've never seen anything like it!" They were fawning over each other all the time, he had ceased mating any other hens, they had wandered off by themselves for days, ignoring her chicks and the rest of the flock. The upshot:
"Do you want another rooster?"
I said that if the case of chicken infatuation was that serious, why shouldn't C.P. stay with them, but the two of them were delivered together in a box at dusk. They were very cozily cuddled up in the box, too.
The first notable thing about Chris was that he was strikingly enormous, even in the box. He's huge! She's just tiny next to him and she's on the large side of my hens.
His size didn't stop all of the tiny fluffball Silkie roosters from having a run at him on his first day, mind you. He's much bigger than any of the other roosters I've ever had, so it's a good thing that he's also incredibly gentle. The nicest, mildest rooster I've had so far too.
Here he is with two hens of his own kind. He's 4x the size of a hen, at least. Heavy.
I'd prepared a "temporary" coop for he and Cream Puff to stay in while they transitioned back to life here. It wasn't temporary. They are still sleeping in their honeymoon coop. He's actually too big to comfortably get into the other coops. I don't know if he's been in them.
There have been a few nights where she (got piqued?) and tried to spend the night in a tree, or went into the coop where she used to roost, but they still share a coop, just the two of them.
I didn't see much extreme behaviour from them like my friend described (I have seen other couples bond and spend time away from the flock together at the beginning of their relationship). He's mated other hens (they're always hanging around flirting), and they socialize, but it's true the two of them are always together, never more than a few feet apart.
The first time I put them in the coop together, though, both of them made the cutest sounds I've ever heard. Oh, there you are. I stood outside in the dark listening to them quietly purring to each other inside. Adorable!
