C'mon & Let me see you shake your tailfeather....

Buck is down to one tail feather.   He squandered a couple of them attacking an inert object, The girls have bitten most of the rest off, so now he's shaped like an Araucana.

The next generation of tail is coming in, lovely iridescent green feathers.  I'd better get some hay for the hens' nesting boxes, because I suspect them of pulling out Buck's feathers to improve their nests, leaving their own intact.  Is this Chicken Vanity or convenience?  I don't perceive Buck as the type who would sacrifice his plumage for the greater good.  He's more the type who refuses you a mortgage and raises your insurance premiums.
Still, his self image does not include shame or the possibility that his alphatude could be in any way threatened by the loss of a feather or two, or eight.  He's like the old bald dude at the bar who still thinks he's hot enough to hold the attention of a waitress young enough to be a friend of his daughter's.
The vet, the "avian specialist" was unable to determine Buck's age.  Said he could be anywhere from 3 years to 6.  I still haven't found out how one determines the age of a chicken.  Hens are obvious, if they are laying they are young, if they are not, they are food.
My hens will not be food, at least not human food.  If a coyote or some other hungry dweller in the sanctuary gets them, I know I will have done my best to prevent it.  As I am allergic to eggs, the whole topic of eggs is beside the chicken point for me, I'm happy to have gotten through a summer without being infected again with Lyme's Disease and the only thing that is different is chickens in the yard, sucking down ticks.
It is interesting to me that the man in the street's opinion of Buck is heavily weighted on the side of the stew pot.  Is it that human need we have to feel as though we have control over our environment?  That we can do as we like, and don't have to feel threatened by a 2' tall, 11 pound person with no hands or English language?  Really?  How hard is it to deflect the occasional bad temper of someone where the scale is tipped so obviously in my favor?  I'm surprised and entertained to see, for example, my 6'4" cousin reluctant to get out of his big 4wd truck because Buck is circling it muttering innuendo and inhospitable personal evaluations.
It is said that to run from a grizzly bear isn't the thing to do. It is what I would do, and though Buck might like to think so, he is no grizzly bear.
Over the last couple of months I've learned  that the least ire is aroused by holding still or moving away slowly when he has given me the signal that all is not well. It continues to be a good policy to carry something to place in between myself and a pissed off rooster but I'm finding that he perceives me less as someone who is going to mess with him and more as someone who might have grapes.