Here Chick chick chick

Well, I went into the chicken coop the other day and started to grab up roosters. Sounds like fun doesn’t it? I think that I counted around 11 hens, I thought that we had more but maybe not. We did lose one to what we think was a raccoon. The hen didn’t come inside at night, we didn’t notice when we locked the chickens up in the coop. I had the pleasure of finding it the next day under the lilac bush minus its head. Raccoons typically eat only the head and leave the rest behind. The other day there was a large raccoon dead in the road, so perhaps he met the same fate that our poor little Buff Orpington did?
Ok, I got off subject…back to the roosters. Now if there are 11 hens, give or take that means there are about 19 or so roosters. Yikes!!! That is way too many. Especially going into winter. We don’t need to feed all of those extra birds and during the winter time they are not able to go out to explore as much as they would like. They eat so many bugs, grubs, worms and greens in the summer free ranging that we dont have to feed them a whole lot. Just a bit to get them in the coop at night. In the extreme cold their combs (red part on top of their head) and wattles which is the red skin hanging under their beaks can get frost bit. The skin then eventually dies and falls off, just like it does with humans. So here I am in the chicken coop, hunched over trying to grab scurrying and squawking birds. Right now we have the chickens in a large dog kennel inside the barn with some boards laid over the top so they cannot escape. Once the corn comes out we are going to move a chicken coop to our place that our neighbor gave to us. Corn needs to come out though so we can drag it through the field on skids. Needless to say the birds are freaked out since I am in there and also since I have a couple of birds hanging by their feet from my left hand. There are a few birds that don’t follow the others when it is time to come inside. The others are really good ….I can yell “come on girls” and they come scurrying to the barn…they know its feeding time and don’t mind the gender thing . We have a 12 ft cage, long and narrow hanging by the “coop” which our neighbor used for bantys. Its big enough for rabbits so we have one rabbit in it now, its perfect to put those roosters in so I start filling the empty spots with roosters. Right now I have 6 birds in the cage, with space for I think 3 more? During the spring/summer months I saved some of those individual serving pudding cups (empty), it seemed just a shame to toss them and I thought that I would get seedlings started in them. I poked 2 holes in them and used some wire to put 2 in each cage. One for food and the other for water. The day before we decide to do the deed the food will be taken away so their system can be flushed pretty much clean. When we first had chickens we butchered them ourselves. Its not really that bad, but oh the smell! Once the chicken is dead you dip it in scalding hot water so you can pluck it. Let me tell you there is nothing like the smell of hot, wet dirty chicken with a hint of poop. Now there chickens are not spanking clean, certainly they are not covered in filth but they are outside animals. Think of wet dog only much, much worse! For these roosters we didn’t want to take the time plucking them or taking them to the poultry processors so we thought maybe we would just skin them. We don’t really eat the skin that much, I don’t make fried chicken, other than oven fried and that doesn’t require the skin. So today I did some research on skinning chickens and it totally looks like something that we can handle. No plucking nasty feathers or messing with scalding hot water. It looks similar to how we will butcher the rabbits. Just pull the skin off kind of like a sweater. We will hopefully be doing them this coming weekend and I will try and let you know how it goes.