If I could be sure of how this looked across all platforms I’d have the graphic be the last word in the title, but then I’ll see it on Facebook or somewhere and it won’t look quite right. Regardless, I thought I’d review the weekend for you. Again, I did not take any photos. Becoming a trend, that.

So, Saturday we were able to go ahead and do our rooster culling. We had to say goodbye to Pretty Boy, M, RCW Red, Mr. Secretary, and “the two young yellows”. We just had too many boys on the property. We still have the Red Wanderer, Sr. Pantalones, Gully II, Vicente, Frizzle, Mr. P., and The Pond Banty. Technically you should have at least 10 hens for each rooster, so given that equation we should have 70 hens, but I think we’re really up to around 90. We suspected that Pretty Boy had caused the death of at least one hen, perhaps more; M we becoming a bit aggressive to the girls; RCW Red had injured a couple of hens and was an all around nuisance to everyone in the RCW; Mr. Secretary was not really growing into the job; “the two young yellows’ were causing issues with their flock-mates and being very obnoxious to the hens in the main coop. Sometimes, you just have to get rid of the crazy ones in order to keep your flocks calm. That could be a metaphor for life.

As processing days go, it wasn’t really the best. Right off the bat, Sue got bit – incredibly hard – between her thumb and fore-finger. The mark persists today. I ended up with a filleted finger. We have three birds that must have skin that’s a eighth inch thick and only good for chicken stock. It took us as long for these 6 as it usually does for 15! I supposed you could call it the shake down cruise for the beginning of processing season. We were both absolutely done in the next day. It was brutal. But we survived. And we will do it again, four or five times this summer. We’ll work it out, like we always do. We get really good by the end of the summer! You know that we’ll share our experiences with you as we improve, or not. Until then, as always~
Thanks for reading!