Official BYC Poll: What do you do with your roosters?

[Mr.chickens]

I give all kitchen vegetable waste to my chickens after grinding it. In this mix there is carrots, rice, grains, and peanut peels and many more. Is it OK to feed all such things

 

[BantyChooks]

I give all kitchen vegetable waste to my chickens after grinding it. In this mix there is carrots, rice, grains, and peanut peels and many more. Is it OK to feed all such things

Yes.

 

[Mr.chickens]

Tnx banty

 

[BantyChooks]

By the way... in case anyone is feeling guilty about eating commercially raised chickens, check out Perdue's website and their very recent strides towards welfare of broiler birds. I am really impressed. They still don't compare to home raised active birds but I will be definitely buying from them when I do have to get some from the store.

 

[0wen]

Lots of comments coming in. It does seem daft to be giving birds away then popping down the supermarket to buy one that was probably raised in crowded inhumane conditions. Maybe one day I might be able to get my head around butchering one of my own. Did anyone else struggle the first time or am I the only soppy git? Is it easier after the first time?

It does get easier. I was vegetarian for a decade, my wife vegan for the same span. My first cull was to a coturnix quail chick that had a severe leg deformity. Later that same year, I culled my first quail for food - only a half dozen or so. I plan on filling a freezer this year of coturnix and will add chickens to the mix this year.

The quail in the past, I've just wrung their necks/pulled their heads off. I plan on culling via controlled atmosphere killing this year just because I feel it will be easier to do the numbers I plan on processing this year.

 

[bobbi-j]

Lots of comments coming in. It does seem daft to be giving birds away then popping down the supermarket to buy one that was probably raised in crowded inhumane conditions. Maybe one day I might be able to get my head around butchering one of my own. Did anyone else struggle the first time or am I the only soppy git? Is it easier after the first time?

It does get a bit easier as it goes on. I have learned when I know I have a cockerel to start distancing myself from it. I tell myself "this bird will be meat", and that helps some. Once the head is off, it's just meat. Much easier on me at that point. The hardest thing for me is to make a live chicken a dead chicken. (Or, rather, watch my husband do it.)

 

[keesmom]

Extra cockerels are butchered here. They make outstanding soups and stews! Unfortunately extra pullets are as well. I don't mind doing the cockerels so much, as they are usually hitting the PITA stage. It's tough to do pullets but there is little interest in non-hatchery Faverolles around here. Especially the bantams no matter how rare.

 

[BantyChooks]

It does get easier. I was vegetarian for a decade, my wife vegan for the same span. My first cull was to a coturnix quail chick that had a severe leg deformity. Later that same year, I culled my first quail for food - only a half dozen or so. I plan on filling a freezer this year of coturnix and will add chickens to the mix this year.

The quail in the past, I've just wrung their necks/pulled their heads off. I plan on culling via controlled atmosphere killing this year just because I feel it will be easier to do the numbers I plan on processing this year.

Interesting... how do you plan on controlling appropriate CO2/Argon/whatever you use levels so as not to induce panic before insensibility? Or are quail small enough it does not matter, similar to chicks?

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

Lots of comments coming in. It does seem daft to be giving birds away then popping down the supermarket to buy one that was probably raised in crowded inhumane conditions. Maybe one day I might be able to get my head around butchering one of my own. Did anyone else struggle the first time or am I the only soppy git? Is it easier after the first time?

If it gets easier than the animals never meant anything to you.

Some roosters are easier than others because of their behaviors.

I think the decision process gets easier, and the act of butchering gets easier as you figure it out, but the guilt remains, which in my opinion is a good thing. They still were my kids at one time. I personally can't distance myself from that, but I also understand how life works, and that most roosters can't find a good home.

Better to raise them up, otherwise most get ground up at hatch because no one wants them, or the responsibility.

 

[JerryR708]

I give them to my local feed store when they start competing for a mate. Sometimes I get store credit for feed. I leave their destiny in somebody else's hands for a second chance at life. I get attached and not able to kill them. I turn around and see them in their pen as I drive away from the feed store teary eyed. I watch them hatch and grow and spend time with them in my lap and we become buddies. Its easier to buy chicken from the store than to think about my babies and silently cry. I don't get over killing something very easily.