Our First Bird Attack

Isn’t that ironic.  My post yesterday says “Bleak Future for Nasty Roosters”.  And today one got killed by a predator bird.  That’s not quite what I meant when I said bleak future but it’s certainly turned out that way.

It was my usual routine to check for eggs one last time just around 5 pm when my day job was done.  Then I heard the hens squawking as if they just laid eggs.  But it was for a different reason.  As I was opening the gate, I saw a huge bird almost the size of a turkey with a nice long colourful tail rushed out from underneath of the coop and flew away.  And I knew immediately something bad happened.  My first worry was how many are the casualties.  When I looked underneath I saw one of my Barred Rock rooster dead with one side ripped open and some of its intestines already out.  My first instinct was to cry.  This is the very first time a predator had gotten to my chicken.  I don't know what kind of bird attacked the rooster.  I only saw the bird's back and it looked like this. Hawk?

Here’s the picture of the dead Barred Rock rooster just about a foot away from the opening under the coop.  There were two other unharmed roosters underneath and at the time they looked shocked and not moving at all.

 

It’s weird that yesterday, I was just angry with my roosters.  Earlier this morning, I even separated 4 Rhode Island Red roosters into the smaller coop because they were stressing and causing injuries to the hens.  And it is also in preparation for selling them.

And now that a predator had attacked and partly eaten a rooster, I somewhat felt thankful that it was not a hen.  At this time of the year, the roosters are usually the ones going outside as if they are guarding the front door of the coop.  

I had to act quickly to salvage whatever is left of the rooster.  One missed meal by the predator bird, one meal gained for me.  I’m very queasy about butchering and cleaning up a chicken to start with.  This is my first time to deal with cleaning and dressing the chicken.  And the process is quite gross and was even thinking that there’s no way I can eat this.  Here are the steps.  I followed this video I saw online How to Butcher a Chicken 2.  The hardest part is cutting the head of the rooster.  And it took forever to cut it maybe because my knife is not sharp enough or I just don’t know exactly which part of the neck to cut.

After cutting the head, I dunked it into boiling hot water. 

I think I dunked it too long because the skin and some of the meat had started cooking.  The video I was following said to just dunk it for about 30 seconds.

And below is when I was almost done plucking the feathers.  The skin gets pulled.  It shouldn’t.  So I don’t know what I’m doing wrong here.

This is the better side.

And this is the bad side where the predator had ripped it open.

This is the most gross part – removing the inside stinky stuff.  The crop is where the food is stored that has not been digested yet.  And you can see the feeds are still intact. 

And here’s the chicken after I inserted the chicken stuffing.

For stuffing recipe, I followed this link Roast Chicken.  I don’t have celery so I used cauliflower instead.  It’s just finished roasting and here's the finished product.

Sorry Mr Roo.  Your life had to end this way.  You were one of my favourites and I was gonna use you for breeding.

Here's the picture of the Barred Rock roosters.  I think he's the one on the right side.  Quite a beautiful rooster.

Life with chickens is indeed far from dull.

Bleak Future for Nasty Roosters

Chickens make me happy overall but not when someone gets injured.  One more Rhode Island Red hen in pretty bad shape due to rooster’s very rough way of breeding.  This is the second hen I had to rescue since a couple of days ago.  I didn’t get a chance to take a close-up picture but this is how our makeshift ICU looks like in the bathroom.  

Today I spotted another hen in the coop that has open wounds from rooster’s clawing them while they breed.  That will be the 3rd bruised hen.  I can’t bring her in yet as I need another cage.  I can’t find the other cage we have.  I think it’s buried in snow outside.  This is additional chore I really don’t have time to do.  But I just have to keep going.  And it will have to be like this until spring. I tried putting them together in one cage but the 2 hens don't get along so I had to use a milk crate and just covered the top with cardboard.

The slaughter house near us isn’t open until spring around mid-March and if the temperature doesn’t get warmer anytime soon, I don’t know how many more injured hens I’ll end up with.  Now, I don’t know why I let the roosters live through the winter.  In the end it’s not worth the hassle of keeping them.  They eat a lot and are just a pure liability.  I am very frustrated at this point that I may be able to kill them this coming weekend.  I asked my husband to help me hold them but he refused.  So it’s going to be difficult to do this on my own.  The slaughter house is going to charge $3.99 per chicken to butcher and have them fully dressed. and I find that a bit expensive as I have 10 roosters I want to kill.  The other option is to sell them on Kijiji which I have already listed. Rhode Island Reds for sale

Here are the vicious roosters.  And ironically enough, they were the ones that had sex change.  I bought them as hens last October.  That’s why I’m upset.  And I feel bad because the 3 Barred Rock are so cute (last picture below).  But they have really bad attitude.

Nasty roosters

And after I thought our Saturday was going just fine, at the end of the day something bad happened.  While my husband was closing up the chicken coop, he noticed one of our Rhode Island Red hens was still underneath the coop not moving and just standing on the far end.  Our first option was for me to crawl under the coop and get her. But I was worried I won’t fit and could get stuck while crawling.  And it would be really gross to do so as the chickens usually hang around underneath during the day.  And didn’t want to get my coat dirty.  Here’s how small the bottom opening of the coop looks like.

 We had to unscrew the left side of the bottom of the coop to get the chicken but luckily she walked outside on her own towards the front of the coop.  So unscrewing the side board was useless and now we have to put it back.  Unfortunately, she’s really in bad shape.  That explains why she isolated herself under the coop.  Her back has an open wound and both sides under the wings has been ripped open.  It looks like some of the roosters had roughly mounted her.  I have seen roosters mounting the same hen at the same time or right after the other.  She is very small hen to start with and the rooster’s claws must have ripped both her sides open.  

Here are the pictures of the poor hen.  We put hydrogen peroxide on her wound and flushed it with saline solution.  I don’t know if she will make it tomorrow morning.  I hope so.  Time will only tell.  She’s inside our house in the bathroom.  And I don’t like this to happen but what can I do?  I will check in tomorrow morning if there are other chickens in the same condition.

 

 

At first, I’ve told myself, maybe there was a predator that did this.  But no, the dogs have been indoors all day.  And at this time of the year, if any predators will attack, they will not leave anything alive as they are all hungry for food.

I’m again very angry with my roosters as I’m very attached to my hens.  They damaged the hen's back, wings and sometimes the neck, while breeding.  What is it about male animal species?  I’ve decided they are going to be my food in the spring.  With all these nasty things they’re doing, there is no question I won’t spare them.  Their days are counted.  I will have my revenge and maybe hold a big barbeque party.  Imagine, I think we now have 21 roosters out of the 49 chickens.  A few had a sex change.  We were sold about 18 hens last October and 5 of them turned out to be roosters.  The desired proportion is supposed to be 5 hens to 1 rooster.  We have to increase the hens or decrease the roosters.  Right now, we should only have maximum of 6 roosters for 28 hens.  But we have 21 roosters so the hens are really stressed out.  My next blog will be about which 6 roosters I will keep.

I’m still hoping to get some fertilized eggs from select few gentle roosters so I can hatch some chicks this spring.

Kale treats for the girls and roos on a bitter cold winter

My small flock of chicken on a bitter cold winter day

Fairy Egg

I got a surprise fairy egg yesterday.  It must be from the latest set of pullets we got last October.  Just to show you how small.  I fried it along with the normal sized egg (pictures below).  Fairy eggs are laid by very young hen.  It will eventually get bigger over time but the first few eggs usually are very small.

Just to digress, the first picture is how I dressed really early in the morning to clean the nesting boxes and the floor of the coop.  I didn’t last more than 10 minutes.  My fingers felt so painful I couldn’t move them even when I was wearing an insulated gloves.  That’s how bad -20 C is.  I feel bad for people who has to work outdoors.  Needless to say, the nesting boxes wasn't done cleaning.  Water in the big bucket froze by mid-afternoon.  And still my girls laid 5 eggs today so I gave them some kale.