One more thing, these guys were 22 weeks old and the testes on them were huge! I've seen the 'beans' on younger ones that looked like navy beans and these were gigantic compared to that.Probably 1 1/2" long and rounded, swollen. I never would have thought they'd be that big.
Both were big, but the black one was biggest. My loppers are Fiskars that are meant to trip branches up to 1 1/2". I had them hanging by the feet against a tree trunk. I took the loppers and opened wide so the entire neck was in it and used the tree trunk as a back stop (so he couldn't...
I finally did 2 cockerels this morning. The first, I used a utility knife and got him bleeding out pretty good, but then he struggled and got one leg loose so I guess the bleeding wasn't as good as I thought. So, I got my big loppers and that did it. Had to clip the last bit of skin, but...