We are sad to report that our poor cute rooster is no more...
As I mentioned before, we put the rooster in the brooder for a couple days so he could adjust to his new home and all the other animals around here. He seemed a little stir crazy in there so we let him out a couple times for a short time when we were able to supervise. And every time we did the turkeys (and a few hens) wouldn't leave the poor guy alone... which kept the rooster scared pretty much all the time.
Friday night we thought we would let him out into the barn at night so he would already be there when everyone woke up in the morning. Ironically that night, we went to "tuck in" everyone and the rooster had already gotten out of the brooder (he knocked over some boards which had to hurt) and was just sitting on top of it. Made our job easy! We decided to do this Friday night so that we (I'm using this word loosely, by "we" I mostly mean Sam) could be out there Saturday morning to supervise without having somewhere to be. Sam went out and checked on the rooster in the morning and he was still in his spot on the brooder (we assume he felt safer there) so we just let him stay there.
We had planned to play pickleball with some friends that morning so Sam checked on the rooster again right before we left and he still hadn't moved from his spot on the brooder. We figured he would be fine there so we left and played pickleball for a couple hours. Then we went to our friends' house and had brunch and picked raspberries... so by the time we got home again about 4 hours had gone by.
When we went into the backyard we couldn't find the rooster anywhere so we figured he jumped over a fence somehow and we got ready to go on a rooster hunt (I was used to this with having to chase down a few mischievous turkeys in the past). We couldn't really see or hear him but then Sam looked more closely into our neighbor's yard just to the north of us and saw white feathers alllllll over... never a good sign. Especially when that neighbors has two really big dogs. The poor rooster unfortunately became one of the dog's morning snack. :(
We assume the rooster got brave and decided to venture out of the barn but was being chased/bullied by those blasted turkeys and jumped over anything it could to find refuge from those dang turkeys. Unfortunately, of ALL the yards he could have jumped into (we have 5 different yards that meet up with ours) he jumped into the WORST ONE!
We are sad about our poor rooster but there is not much we can do about it. Even though having animals is mostly a lot of fun, death is something you have to deal with too, especially with these kinds of animals. It is never fun to lose an animal and I still have a hard time with it, no matter how many times it happens.
We hope to get another rooster in the future and will keep you posted, as we don't know when that will be!
P.S. Our turkeys are driving me crazy and even though this is probably terrible to say, I think I will be happy when they will be gone next month!
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