Exciting Improvements and Sad Developments

This beautiful photo was taken yesterday evening by guest photographer Kara Lea!  :)  Note the absence of the large rope which formerly spoiled any shots taken from the back porch!  We had a tree service preventively remove dead limbs from our two largest oaks earlier this month, and the new improved view is a fringe benefit.  (This doesn't quite qualify for exciting, but it is an improvement!)

The really exciting improvement developing over at the barn is our tack room.  Yesterday we pulled the chicken girls' gypsy wagon coop outside the barn and halfway to its winter destination in the other half of the Chicken Palace, next to the brooder room.  Then Herb spent the day removing all the boards and chicken wire that we had put up to give the girls a safe, enclosed run in the barn.  This is what's left.  The tack room will be in the back corner of the barn with the future milking parlor in front.

In order to adequately frame in the tack room, Herb added upright pressure-treated support posts with a concrete footing for each one.

At left is one of Herb's pillar supports, buried below ground level.  It takes more work to do it that way, but it's easier to build around.   At right is one that was already in place elsewhere in the barn.  Luckily, we don't want to build anything there, because when the concrete footers are above ground like that, they make it impossible to nail anything flush against the bottom of the pillar.

I'm very excited about this project!  It will be great to have a safe, dry place to store my tack.  And the tack room will serve as one wall for the milking parlor, so we're that much closer to our whole milking project.  Sara's developing quite nicely, too!  :)  Her growing girth makes us realize we need to get going, since her calf is due in about 6 weeks!

A sad development is that my favorite Ameraucana, Wren (the black and white one at left) is turning out to be a rooster!  :(  This picture isn't the greatest because the chicken wire gets in the way of photos, but you can see the little red comb growing on Wren's forehead.  I had decided to butcher any Ameraucanas that turned out to be roosters and to replace them with Naked Neck pullets.  Now I have a dilemma because I've gotten attached to Wren while I thought he was a she!  Kara had some good advice, though:  Go ahead and keep him for now, giving us the possibility to raise our own chicks down the line.  If he turns out to be nasty like Carmen, by that time I would probably feel fine about dispatching him!  Smart girl!

Here's a picture of Pepi-Two (center, reddish-brown with buff around the eyes) another Ameraucana who is turning out to be a pullet like she was supposed to!  One more of the seven is questionable, one I had called Robin until I realized it might be a rooster.  Now the former Robin is called Emu because he (?) is huge and waddles around like a flightless bird.  The other girls are (new) Robin, Chickadee, Sparrow, and Lark--and they seem to be staying girls!

Anybody have any suggestions about what to call a rooster who was formerly a Wren?