Remember those three cute little chickens I bought on a whim a few months ago? Two of them ended up being roosters.
I suspected as such soon after I got them home. Two of the three had larger combs and liked to perform cute little miniature cock fight dances with each other.
I knew buying five week-old chickens at the markets was not a smart thing to do. The seller claimed that they were too young to be sexed, but I think he was just trying to make a buck out of his roosters before he had to deal with them. He offered to take back any roosters, but could only accept them on the first Saturday of the month (the day before market day).
I’ve watched numerous ‘first Saturdays of the month’ pass without taking action. I was in denial. I was hoping that I had three hens or at the very least was giving them a few more weeks to enjoy life.
Then 6.30am in the morning a few days ago we were woken with a ‘Cock-a-doodle-do’. I lay there hoping I was dreaming. Then another ‘Cock-a-doodle-do’ and another and another. Each louder and prouder than the previous.
One of our neighbours isn’t a fan of us treating our backyard ‘like a farm’. I didn’t enjoy his reaction when he discovered we had bees, so we weren’t prepared to give him time to respond to a couple of roosters waking him up.
Duffa Dilly Bong and Flappy had to go. And quickly.
The ‘eco’ thing to do would be to kill them ourselves and cook them up into a healthy nourishing roast, or at the very least some chicken stock. But we just couldn’t.
Waiting a few weeks until the ‘first Saturday of the month’ also wasn’t an option. So we phoned the seller and asked if he’d take them a few weeks early. No luck.
We’ve taken other much loved hens to the vets, and paid $25 each to have them put down when needed, because killing chooks is not something I could do, and is a task Daddy Eco would prefer to avoid. But we both realised paying $50 to have two young roosters put down is just silly.
So Daddy Eco decided he was going to do the deed. He wasn’t thrilled about the idea – but was willing to give it a go. We were planning a Friday night of online chook killing research when I received an email from Kate and Mark from Purple Pear offering to mind them until the next ‘first Saturday of the month’. (Earlier that day Daddy Eco had called them looking for some chook killing advice, thinking that being farmers, they’d be experienced in such tasks. But we’d momentarily forgotten that they are vegetarian).
With a huge sense of relief we accepted Kate and Mark's offer and dropped the roosters off at their holiday coop.
I’ve been surprisingly sad and bothered by the whole experience. They are both the sweetest little chooks and their sister Emu has since been wandering around our yard in distress looking for her brothers.
From now on I think I’ll stick to buying our chooks at point-of-lay. Chickens are fun, but deciding the fate of roosters is not something I enjoy.
{Moral of the story: If you sneakily buy a few chickens when your husband is away (because you know he would say no) and then he’s the one that has to ‘deal’ with them, you will never ever ever ever hear the end of it}
Would you be able to ‘deal’ with a few roosters? Part of me feels guilty about moving them onto someone else to deal with. They’ll likely spend their last day or so in crowded transport. First to the markets. And then to the abattoirs where they’ll probably be processed into pet food. Killing them in our backyard seems far more humane. Am I being a ‘chicken’ passing their fate onto someone else? Am I causing them unnecessary suffering? Or am I simply making too big a deal over a few roosters?
