We moved from the City of Plano, Yuppie City of Texas, to Culleoka. Culleoka is a small little town that doesn’t even have its own post office. We have one drive up store and one gas station. We are deep in the country side surrounded by a lake. Upon moving to the country we were looking forward to having our own chickens for eggs and meat. We bought a big incubator and hatched our own little chicks.
We named them. Never ever name something you plan on eating. Our chickens became our pets.
In their adulthood, my feathered friends began the mating game. It’s always the same. The chicken runs and the rooster chases her. He brutally pins her down and proceeds to mate with her for about 10 seconds. He removes his body and she stands up and ruffles her feathers in disgust. Sometimes the rooster is very mean and will stomp the hen.
I also learned that you should never have more than one rooster per 30 hens because if you don’t have enough hens then the roosters will continuously go for the same hens and this can result in the poor hen’s death or injury.
Any among them that are weak or sick are always picked on by getting chased and pecked on the head.
Because we had too many roosters in comparison to our hens and because roosters can be brutal to each other we decided that we had to cull. First we tried to find homes for them but most folks only seek out roosters to use as coyote bait or for fighting. And with one out of every dozen or so eggs that a hen lays, half will typically always be roosters and that’s just too many for a small farm so we were going to have to resort to killing them for food.
I had remembered as a little girl my Mamaw had rung a hen’s neck for supper. Nobody told me that they will run around all over the place with their heads cut off. My Mamaw took the chicken and swung it by the neck until its head came off and as I stood there already in shock and horror for the poor little chicken the next thing I knew it was, what seemed to me, chasing me. I was screaming my own head off.
I didn’t want to kill a rooster like that so my husband did the deed. Next, we plucked it which was really bloody and disgusting and then boiled it. I couldn’t wait to have the best organic chicken ever. I imagined the way it would melt in our mouths. Proud of ourselves we sat down and prepared to eat our first kill. It was a delicious looking dish of chicken casserole.
I think we all spit it out at the same time. It was rubbery and thick. It was disgusting. What on earth did we do wrong? First, they were too old. They should be killed under the age of 6 months with 4 months being ideal and we should have refrigerated him overnight.
The ordeal was not worth the effort. With roosters still roaming and fighting and being mean my husband finally resorted to hunting them and shooting them for a quick and painless death. We thought we had them all gone but one survived and lived many years with a bullet in his head. He wasn’t quite right after that but he roamed around and mated and ate so I guess he didn’t know any better.
At this time we still live on our farm with chickens but we buy them already all cut up and ready to eat. We go for Tyson’s natural which is the closest to natural we will ever be again. Although we do enjoy fresh eggs. The yolks are a deep orange color and full of protein. At least we receive some benefits from having chickens and roosters on our farm.
Here a few interesting facts I have learned about Roosters and Chckens:
- When a hen is laying eggs, its not uncommon for many hens to squeeze in and lay her egg in the same pile to be hatched by the surrogate hen mother.
- Roosters don’t just crow in the morning, they will crow all day.
- Chickens always return to the same place to roost at night. Chickens go into a very deep sleep and can be easily picked up while sleeping.
- A Chicken’s Comb (The red floppy part on their head) can freeze in freezing weather.
- Some hens will never feel the urge to lay eggs.
- Hens will lay eggs without a rooster but are more than likely to lay more if a rooster is around.
Which Came First? According to National Geographic, scientists have settled the old dispute over which came first — the chicken or the egg. They say that reptiles were laying eggs thousands of years before chickens appeared, and the first chicken came from an egg laid by a bird that was not quite a chicken. That seems to answer the question. The egg came first. ~Source – Knowledge in a Nutshell~
