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.