Mr. Helen has gone to the farm

A few days after I last posted, my mom and I went out to my brother's house to see the chicken tractor he built - which came out really awesome, by the way.  We were checking out his chickens, and as soon as we saw his three Partridge Rocks, our hopes were ruined.  His three were all still fairly small and had tiny combs, which means that our tall, beautiful Mr. Helen, with his big, fabulous comb, is definitely a rooster.

Here's a good picture of the colors in his feathers.  See the green near the end of his wings?  He's so beautiful.

Unfortunately, we're not allowed to have roosters in town, and since he's quite vocal compared to our other chickens, we knew we had to find him a new home.  Not just get rid of him - we didn't want to send him off to the slaughterhouse, and we didn't think we could actually kill him ourselves.  We wanted to find him a real home, someplace where he could roam free and happy, and where he could keep the name Mr. Helen.

Apparently the chicken forums are packed full of offers for free roosters, and no one seems to want them, except maybe for dinner.  Then my mom called Spence, from Spence's Farm, and he said, "Sure, bring him over any afternoon!  We'll put him in the chicken pen."  We really wanted to keep Mr. Helen long enough to hear him crow, but my mom didn't want to wait too long and risk Spence changing his mind.  So we took Mr. Helen over there yesterday afternoon.

"What?!  You're going to leave me here?!"

We thought Mr. Helen's comb was awesome, but check out the comb on this dude!

Here is Mr. Helen having his first altercation with a bigger rooster:

But Mr. Helen stood his ground and I was proud of him.  I think he'll be okay.  He just has to establish himself in the pecking order.

After that was over, Mr. Helen started roaming around, checking out where everything is in his new home.

This is the chicken pin from outside the fence:

And here is the winter coop:

So that's Mr. Helen's new home!  As we were leaving, we felt kind of bad that our other chickens couldn't live out there on that big farm, but they'll have their own awesome chicken coop soon!