The young chickens that I hatched at the end of February were finally getting to the age where they could be mixed in with the older chickens. I had wanted to wait until they started to lay eggs before moving them in with the older hens, but they are going on 19 weeks now and are definitely large enough to hold their own with the older hens.
The plan was to move the four younger hens and the two isolated hens back into the large pen. The nice rooster and the mean barred rock hens who I suspect have been pecking eggs were going to move into the small secure pen where I had the youngsters. I wanted the rooster to be separate from the girls for a while to see if they could regrow some feathers after the severe damage that has been done by his overzealous mating habits. The mean barred rock hens needed to be separated so I could safely return the other lower pecking order hens to the flock. I had hoped to make the transition as smooth as possible by moving the groups around at night and doing all the changing at once to minimize long term stress.
Everything was going well until the friendly rooster got a little wound up after being moved into the small pen. We had moved the pen into a new location right after setting the birds in their new home and the rooster decided to start trying to fly around the new enclosure which happened to be quite a bit smaller than the one he had been in. Unfortunately he flew into the chicken wire fence that makes the sides and top of the pen and broke his neck right in front of me. At first I thought he was just severely stressed from the new changes, but it quickly became apparent that it was far more serious than that. He was gone within a few short minutes. I was shocked by how quickly my plans had changed.
My evening then became an exercise in salvage. I certainly wasn't going to let my sweet rooster go to waste, so I got to work on the gruesome business of butchering a chicken. It wasn't quite what I had planned for tonight, but it now needed to happen. This rooster was just over a year old, so I knew he would be pretty tough. I decided that I wanted to skin him instead of pluck him, but I had no idea that would take me so long since I had never done it before. I was being as careful as I could to remove the "pelt" in one piece, though being my first time, I made a few mistakes. When I was finally finished skinning I was left with a good sized bird and I decided that I would brine it for a few days to help it become more tender.
I was sad to see the handsome rooster go, but at least his death was fast, and his body won't be wasted. He never gave me trouble when I picked him up, never attacked me and liked to follow me around and let me pet him. I was hoping to hatch some chicks from him, so I am gathering all of the eggs laid for the next couple of days and will set them to hatch. Hopefully I will get another 3 or 4 chicks out of the deal. If I am lucky, they might have his sweet disposition.
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