Farewell Roosters

Roosters’ last day!

Today is the day I’ve been waiting for since the roosters had been messing with the hens and at one point killed a hen.  They are going to the local butcher shop.  It will cost me $3.35 per chicken to have them slaughtered and dressed.  It will be additional cents if I wanted them weighed but I don't need that as we will just eat them ourselves anyway or give away to family or friends.  

I have 13 roosters and I want to keep only one as a guard rooster.  However I’m torn apart which one I should keep.  I have to capture them tonight and put in boxes in preparation for delivery very early tomorrow morning (7 am).  I’d love to keep more than one as pets but the feed cost gets too expensive.  I have 44 laying hens at the moment and 21 growing chicks.  Based on statistics, it usually is 50/50 chance of hens and roosters so I might end up with 10 or 11 cockerels out of these 21 chicks.  Plus I have 38 eggs in the incubator expected to hatch this weekend and I plan to sell them and whatever doesn’t sell I will keep.

Anyway, the purpose of this blog is to decide which of these short-listed 3 roosters I should keep.  I’ve been thinking of keeping this one (pic below) because he is very light and it won’t be too much weight to bear for the hens when he breed them.  And I love the multi-colour as it looks unique.  This is a Dorking cross.  Easy to catch when needed and quite gentle.  However this is not a very good guard rooster in case there’s a hawk attack.  He’d be the first one to run away instead of defending the hens.

My second choice to keep is this one below.  He is also very beautiful.  From the very young age, he has been always tame and even let me put a ribbon costume on him last fall.  However, he’s a bit on the heavy side and it can injure a hen when he’s breeding.  But like the one above, he’s very efficient when breeding.  What I mean by that is unlike other roosters, he quickly dismounts the hen and pretty quick in breeding.  The others sometimes would remain standing on top of the hen even when they are finished doing it and causing the hen's back to bleed.

And my third choice is the rooster below.  He is a large Brahma mix breed.  I like the colour as it matches my other Columbian Rock hens.  He is also very friendly and very easy to catch if needed.  However he’s very heavy and not very efficient in breeding hens like the second one above.  His heavy weight can also injure the hens while breeding.  I like the feathers on his feet though.