We let one of our proud hens hatch her first clutch of eggs. They weren’t all hers. But we didn’t tell her that. She did really well. We kept her in a box with her little fluffy charges for a few weeks. We knew from prior experience that they needed to be big enough to fight off cats, hawks and other nasties.
Things were great for a while. But nothing in the animal kingdom stays cute for long. Pretty soon we were overrun with poultry. Feeding them in the mornings became quite a scary experience. Imagine thirty angry birds running toward you. Beady eyes fixed on you. Scaly feet pumping back and forth. Kind of hopping from side to side as they ran.
And things got even worse when our male babies hit adolescence. Suddenly it was a game of who can be the loudest. Who has the biggest wing feathers. Who has the sharpest beak. Things were getting pretty nasty.
We managed to offload one of our young roosters at least.
Our neighbours Rose and Al moved out of their house earlier this year. They are now living in a converted shipping container down the road. They have their own blog called The Crate Outdoors.
A nice family has since moved in next door. Being New Zealand of course they happen to be cuzzies. Olivia is my father’s brother’s ex-wife’s niece. We had them over for dinner and found out they had some bantam hens but no rooster. We sure had a deal for them!
We headed outside and grabbed the largest one. I don’t blame him for all the squawking and carrying on he did. I can imagine myself being yanked out of bed by the feet and shoved in a box. Little did he know, he was the lucky one. We still had nine more roosters left.
Time for some hard decisions. And rooster soup.
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