Not many of our animals have names. Sure, we have named the dogs and cats, but the food animals are a different story. Even at the beginning of our farm adventure, we knew that these animals weren’t pets. That’s an important distinction. We still care for these creatures and respect them for who they are, but we don’t get attached the same way.

In the normal course of life, however, some animals get named. With the pigs, we had Ranunculus, the boar we bought from Pandora Farms. And, there was Number Two, named for his ear tag.

Here, you see a photo of Bad Jr. He has the distinction of being the only chicken who has hatched on Black Sheep Farms. He is the combination of a Sumatra black mother and our Rhode Island Red rooster, Big Bad Rooster. This gives him a beautiful combination of beetle green and feiry red feathers. In his youth Big Bad (also called BB), would chase our boys around the yard, flapping like mad. He was the biggest rooster of the bunch, so the kids started to identify him as the Big Bad Rooster. Clever, huh?

Today, with the first snow of December, Bad Jr. finally moved into the chicken coop. His mother had laid her eggs in a corner of the pig hut, and they spent the summer and fall following the pigs in their rotation around the alfalfa fields. No chicken likes snow – at least none that I know – so he reluctantly hopped up the concrete step and joined the rest of the flock inside. It was a big day for him.

-Brian