In May, my girls, convinced me to get some fertilized eggs for our broody hen (a hen who wants to sit on eggs and have babies...if only she knew) to hatch out. Those hatched out early summer. We also purchased more birds to raise for meat later that month. Then, we ordered more egg laying babies (all hens) to replace some of our more obnoxious hens from our egg laying flock later. I have.too.many.chickens.
The meat chickens were purchased straight run. Which means, they send you chicks as they are laid without sexing as they are laid. Yes...there are people who work for hatcheries called sexers. I would like that name tag. [My NAME] SEXER. That is awesome. So, straight run means bottom line, they will be less than 1/2 roosters. At first, we looked at it and saw that was cheaper then all female or all male and since we plan to eat them...what do we care? Oh... WAIT. We care cause roosters are loud and obnoxious. Like a two year old who has learned to whistle and will not stop doing it horribly. If you have to process them too early then you end up with a smaller bird (still sizeable) and less meat then you could get with a fully mature bird. Mental note for next time....all hens.
So fast forward to yesterday. We returned from a weekend away to find out that we had a crowing rooster. We live in a subdivision with largish yards without a chicken ordinance and we have neighbors with chickens (a few with roosters) but I don't want to be the one that causes a problem because I do have too many chickens. So...cockadoodle doo....over and over. We packed the boys all up to take them to the Amish man for processing only to find out that he can't handle them for several days so we decide to handle Mr. Crows A'lot. Details spared...he was handled and he went in the refrigerator. Then...this morning... I walk out to this:
Three roosters crowing...some of them from the hatched chick cage. How do I keep them quiet enough for them to reach full size? I don't want to take time from my work day to "handle" more...the Amish man isn't available until the end of the week... so...what's a girl to do.
I spent about 10 minutes playing various videos from YouTube with crowing roosters trying to get the crower to identify himself so I could 'handle' him. To no avail. Once I walked out there with the tags to mark the crowers...they stopped. I think they were on to me since one disappeared yesterday.
So, I opted to separate them in a more excluded part of the yard so they wouldn't disturb the neighbors or be otherwise stimulated by the hens and then prompted to crow and demonstrate their manliness. Once I separated them I put a tarp over their enclosure so they couldn't see what was going on with the girls. If it gets hot...I can put a box fan at the opening. This seemed to help ... A LOT. No more mid day crowing. I moved them to a part of the yard that was far from the ladies so they didn't hear the chattering and such from them. Then my neighbor said that she heard an old wives tale that if you put a laundry basket over them...they can't stand up to crow. Light BULB!! So, I put a layer of poultry netting in their enclosure to keep them from being able to stand up tall. It is kind of high...but I don't want to restrict them TOO much and I can always lower it.
My goal is to let them hang out for another few weeks so we get a maximum return on our investment while they live humanely. Everyone is invited to my backyard tomorrow at 6am to see if it works!
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