Thank you Nina Simone for the lyrics that beautifully express my feelings on being able to sleep in past 4:45 AM without any rooster crow's waking me up. We are all much more rested and, on average, less cranky.
From 28 to 14 chickens. The roosters are gone, or shall we say, frozen in time in our freezer. Farmer J and the children have had fried chicken quite a bit in the past few weeks. JJ said the chicken was the best he had ever had. It doesn't seem to bother the children at all to be eating the "meat birds." I guess because they knew the fate of the birds from before they even arrived. They do, periodically, ask if we will eat the hens. The answer: "No, honey. We don't eat the pets we name." But... if one of them would happen to die, of natural causes... who knows!
Peace has been restored to the farm. The violence of the roosters was getting to all of us and I'm so happy to be able to sit at my dining room table or do our dishes and not see the latest cock match happening outside the window. And the overall volume of the coop and surrounding lawn area has dramatically decreased. The hens really make very little noise. I do miss, on rare occasion, the crow of the rooster but I'm pleased that the serenity of the farmstead is back. With the roosters gone, the hens are much braver and travel much farther from the coop. They also seem to understand that us humans feed them. Just today, five hens came clucking up to the children looking for something to eat. It's not rare to find them on our front porch or attempting to get into Farmer J's garden.
Here are some pictures of the rooster harvest (before and after.) Nothing gruesome.
But before we get to the photos we must thank those that came to help:
Butchers Dennis and Jill
Photojournalist Luke
Farm helpers Sarah and Mary
Goodbye Rooster White Giant!
De-plucking the feathers. Thank you Mary and Jill!
The hens came to check out the scene.
