Introducing...!!

Cock o' the Walk...Musashi!  He is such a beautiful boy.  He, like the girls, is as soft as a cloud.  His comb and wattles are a deep maroon, with large, brilliant, almost iridescent aqua blue ear flaps.  He wears his comb at a rakish angle, much closer to the beak than "standard" roosters.  Unlike the downy topknot that the girls wear like a chapeau, he has real feathers on his head, a ruff of long, silky feathers, and true feathers on his tail.  He does have formidable spurs tucked in among the feathers on his feet.  All the Silkies have black skin, regardless of the color of their feathers.  He seems to be a very gentle boy, but he came from a group of males only, and he may become more protective when he realizes that the harem is his...all his!  I think I will miss it when Yuki does her come-hither squat for someone else. 

Unless Yuki (or one of the others, if they catch onto the idea) hatches a clutch of eggs and raises some females, Musashi will be limited to just the three Silkies.  While he certainly could mate with the standard hens (a male is a male is a male, after all, and it's not breeding interspecies), I'm not sure he is aggressive enough to run their gauntlet and I'm not willing to find out.  He seemed so little in the crate by himself, but he is nearly twice the size of the girls.  Putting him in the Taj after dark worked like a charm and the girls completely accepted his presence yesterday morning.  (Go figure.)  Doesn't say much for their short-term memory, but if it works, it works!  At any rate, come nightfall last evening, he tucked himself in close to the girls with only a little urging from Bessie Anne, who, even outside the fence, feels it is her duty to herd chickens inside at dusk.  With apologies to Frank and Nineteen, Musashi is the only male with testosterone on the farm, and it's nice to have a man around the chicken house.