What do you do with your cockerels?

[mandelyn]

I sex the best I can when they hatch, noticing little drab details, or striking features early on. Like one of my chicks has a giant yellow comb while one has a drab and almost dark colored one. Since they are the same breed, I know 1 is a boy, and 1 is a girl from experience. They are single comb, so that makes it easy. On a rose comb or pea comb, the girls are usually pretty flat in the comb area for a long time. The other chick, has a yellow comb too, but it's small. So... jury is out. If I had more chicks, I would sell the obvious boys AND the "I dunno" chicks ASAP. Putting the drab boring looking pullets in their own brooder. Some of the "I dunno" chicks will likely be female. It's your call if you want to keep those or not.

The sooner you sell or give away, the smaller your feed bill. If I have to feed them for 6 months, I lean towards breeding or eating, depending. Any mean rooster is automatic freezer camp. I'm convinced attitude is genetic. I've never hatched a mean rooster from my own eggs, and never bred a mean rooster for hatching eggs.

The longer you wait in your decision, the more counter productive it is. Building a bachelor pad for the favorite 2-4 is fine. But when you have 20 extra, you need a plan. And the sooner you can identify gender, the better. Much easier to sell cute chicks for $1 each than it is to give away a half grown roo with the crow of a 13 year old boy. Sell them early or grow them out to their full potential.

 

[JosieChick]

We just processed our first batch of nine extra roos a few weekends ago and I have to say it was not as bad as I thought it would be. We sold a few of the real nice guys prior but there are so many free roos in our area that I am sure if we offered them up for free they would have been someone elses dinner so I am glad we took the time to do it ourselves. I was glad they didn't have to be transported and handled by strangers. Our chickens know us and love us. We bring them treats and care for them every day so they are very trusting and easy to handle. I do sale and offer for free most of my bantam roos because people are always looking for those in our area to keep as roosters with their bantie hens. It just depends on what is in demand in your area. It is nice to know that our roos led a good life, scratched all day long and had fresh air and sunshine and those things are most important to me whether they wind up staying or going to the freezer.

 

[HorseFeatherz NV]

I think it is very important for people to THINK about what they will do with all the chicks they hatch - before they hatch, and mostly I am talking cockerels.


The majority of my cockerels are for the dinner table or dog food. A good chunk of mine do get names - it was how I was raised - everything deserves respect and good treatment. I know their personalities but I also know I will be processing them.

 

[Happy Chooks]

We eat ours. If I find someone wanting a roo, of course I offer to give one to them. But mostly, they are dinner. I raise the chickens, so DH does the killing part, I do the plucking/gutting part. I have no problem with it once they are dead, but I can't do the killing part. Neither DH or I were raised in a hunting environment, and I feel that makes it harder for us.