4 days to be exact. That's right. The roosters (a.k.a, meat birds) will be "harvested" this Saturday. We are keeping one rooster. A bantam rooster. He is much smaller, much quieter and much better behaved. I must say, and I'm being very blunt here, I'm not sad at all that the meat birds will be leaving our farm.
Here are the top five things I dislike (a.k.a. hate) about roosters:
1. They wake up the WHOLE FAMILY at around 4:45 AM. The sun comes up- they start crowing. It was kinda cool at first... not anymore. I'm becoming sleep deprived.
2. They are quiet violent. If they were not fighting with each other, they were picking on my hens. I won't go into details regarding the roosters mean ways as this is a G rated (ok maybe PG rated) blog but... let's just say chicken "relations" are not pretty. And, roosters are not necessarily heterosexual. Two weeks ago, we had to separate the hens from the roosters. It's been better since the separation but now the big roosters are just picking on the little roosters (lucky for the well behaved Bantam rooster- we kept him with the hens.) One of my old farmer friends told me you should have a 1:20 rooster/hen ratio. Our 1:1 rooster/hen ratio was not working out too well. A lesson learned.
3. They are very fast and VERY difficult to round up at night.
4. They've become far from the warm and soft little chick we first came to know and love. You can grab them to hold them and I fear they may pluck my eyeballs out. I often scream and run when they flap their wings at me.
5. They eat A LOT! It's getting pricey to feed them so now it's time to eat them!
In a few days, some family and family friends will come to the farm to de-rooster the place. I will be taking the children on a little day trip as none of us are quite ready to see the realities of chicken farming.
