The Rooster

I love large chicken breeds, so last summer I ordered some barred plymouth and australorp eggs  for my incubator.
I liked the idea of having australian chooks scratching about in the yard and I thought the beautiful black and white zebra plumage of the plymouths would compliment the australorps rather nicely!
I managed to hatch 3 australorp hens, 1 barred plymouth hen and a very impressive barred plymouth rooster.
And here's the problem.  
The rooster is a wee bit scary.
I think he knows I'm scared of him, because whenever I pass by him, he stands his ground, puffs up his beautiful feathers and cocks his eye at me.
Rationally I know he's a 10th the size of me and has a brain the size of a pea, but I've taken to carrying the broom down to the chook yard with me.
The other day, Tom my eldest son questioned me when he saw me coming back with the eggs in one hand and the broom in the other.  I think he knows I'm scared of the rooster too!
My need for fertilized eggs, does however outweigh my fear of him for the moment.
Two out of my four chooks are laying. To be fair they did reach maturity as the days started growing shorter and I really didn't expect any of them to come on the lay until Febuary or March when the days start to get noticeably longer here.
So on the first of January I started collecting their eggs to incubate. Of-course, one of my girls decided to start laying somewhere else and I wasn't able to find her hidden stash, so I only managed to get 10 eggs.
They are now in my  automatic incubator and should hatch on the 28th of this month.
Zero km meat production!