Bantam Cockerels - Butcher day

##### This post contains pictures of dead animals ######

This year we've been using the incubator lots, it's hardly been off over the last few months. Now that means we've got a fair few birds running around the place.

Unfortunately we've been a little unlucky with our hatch ratios - not the best rates, but also so many more cocks rather than hens. The first batch we ended up with 13 chickens and turns out that only two of them are hens - and bantams at that! 

Always More Cockerels...

I'm not sure if it's true or not but there always seems to be more cockerels than hens when you hatch out chicks! 

Take this batch of chicks for example. Five hatched last October (very late - not planned!) and it turns out four are cockerels and only one is a hen!

The hen I'll keep as a laying bird but the boys have a different destiny, I can see four Sunday roasts, a few curries and at least a couple of risottos in front of me! 

Who else thinks that there seems to be more male than females when you hatch chickens or am I just being negative due to this last batch?

Future Sunday Roasts

The boys that hatched out in the summer are pretty much ready to eat I think and look pretty good. They fight a lot so I think it will be time soon to put them in the oven! 

What age do other peopel kill their young cockerels at?

Killing A Cockerel For Dinner

This post contains pictures of dead animals and may offend some. 

Please don't read if you feel that it may upset you as it's not my intention to offend anyone or be controversial. I only want to give a fair account of my lifestyle and the way I'm trying to live. I use this blog as a diary and a record of what we've achieved here and I think this is an important part.

The cockerel is the light coloured chick by the hen.

This Sunday I killed a cockerel for our dinner. 

This has been done for thousands of years and yet when I tell people about it they think it's somehow "odd". My wife's friends at work can't believe that we do it, but I can think of little better than caring for something it's whole life that we're going to eat. 

This cockerel was largely free ranged most of his life, hatched with one of our chickens, from one of our own eggs back in July. He' had a good life, fed well, was looked after and cared for, with a nice patch to roam as he sees fit. 

He was always destined for the dinner table though as we can only really keep one cockerel at the moment and he started to become aggressive towards my girls, trying to attack them when they're in the garden. 

Killing an animal is not something I undertake lightly and it's not something I enjoy. My aim is to do it as calmly, quickly and painlessly as possible, I don't want the animal to be distressed.

I've killed many chickens over the years and I can do it instantly. The cockerel had been isolated the day before, making him easier to catch. I set myself up making sure everything I needed was close to hand and then I killed him first thing in the morning.

Tail feathers removed straight away

Hung to drain

Plucked whilst still warm

 I plucked him whilst he was still warm and found it much easier than normal. He was a good sized bird but the shape of the carcass is so different from the birds you buy in the supermarket that you wouldn't believe they were the same animal. They don't lie flat on the roasting dish and have much, much more leg meat and much less breast meat. There was also a lot more fat on this bird due to the natural grain I've fed him compared to concentrated feed he would have had on a commercial farm.

A real difference between leg meat and breast meat.

I roasted him for an hour and half, whilst he was roasting I also dug up parsnips, Jerusalem artichokes and leeks and got a few squashes from the shed. The only thing I didn't grow for dinner was the potatoes which came from an organic farm a few miles away. 

The leg meat was a bit tough in all honesty but it was perfect in a curry later in the week.

A chicken raised how we wanted on our own little homestead. Meat for two meals, bones for a stock and feathers for compost. 

Almost a closed circle. I need to increase how much food I produce for the chickens on our own land and grow quite a few more of them.

Anyone else raised any meat birds lately?

Chicks Come Early

I'm now feeling much better - thank you to every one for the well wishes. I think it must have been some sort of 24 hour bug and I'm feeling really guilty about it, as my dad, who came to help out with the children, has now got it. No need to guess who's to blame for that one! I just hope he feels better soon and it doesn't spread to the rest of my family! 

 On a brighter note we had some chicks hatch yesterday. Two days earlier than I had marked on the calendar, so I guess she must have been sat on them in the coop for a little longer than I thought before separated her from the rest of the flock! 

 Out of seven eggs, six hatched, one chick was deformed/injured so had to be dispatched straight away (away from the sight of the children) but five chicks isn't bad really. I bet they'll all be cockerels now though! 

 The girls love them, it's going to be as much as I can do to keep Ev away from them! She's really gentle with the chicks and helped me pick up all the egg shells and tidy the nest then told her mum all about it when she got home. What a great way for a little person to learn about life and food!

Melissa seemed fascinated by them as well so hopefully I've got two budding young poultry keepers in the making!

Joining Flocks Of Chickens

After the fox attack on Friday night I decided to join my two flocks of chickens in the "semi fox proof" pen. joining flocks of chickens isn't something to be undertaken lightly but it went smoothly with very little fighting. Mainly due to this chap I think:

A good cockerel does keep the ladies in order. Having double the number of hens he didn't know which way to turn when he was let out!

Thank you to everyone that commented on my last post. I know none of us like loosing our livestock to predators but we also know it's a part of keeping livestock. The old phrase "If you've got livestock, you've got dead stock" Springs to mind. 

Fox Attack

Well November hasn't gone down as my bet chicken keeping month ever!

Saturday morning I went out to feed my three lots of birds (the young lot have been moved to mum and dads as payment for corn!) only to find that the two silkies are no more. This was the only lot that I didn't shut in at night as their coop was so small and difficult to get into I thought it would be safe enough from foxes.

I guess I've learnt a lesson from that but it's a shame that they had to go that way! this were unproductive birds so they're loss isn't going to impact on egg production but I did quite like them and he was always the first to crow when I went outside.

Never mind, time to get the 12 bore and the gun lamp back out I think...

Cockerel Refugee

My wife was somewhat unimpressed when I came home from work on Saturday with another cockerel. "We don't need any more" she said, I'm not even sure we need the two we've already got .

Buff Orpington Cockerel

This guy is big and tough though. The only survivor from a workmates fox massacre.

I figure we'd give him a chance to see how he gets alone with some of our hens. If he's too big for them or gives them too much of a hard time, then he has to go. But in the meantime I quite like the way he's so big and waddles about.

Cockerel Dinner

Well it finally happened, four cockerels was two too many.
The one pen was housing three of these fine looking beasts, but they spent far too much time fighting, "attacking" the hens and crowing. The crowing was the worst, one would start the others off and then they would be at it for ages seeing who could crow the loudest.
It might not have been so bad if I hadn't tried to teach my daughter how to do a "cock-a-doddle-do" and she only got as far as "cock". She then spent the rest of the day saying it over and over and pointing. I think I'll learn by that mistake!

In truth I should have got rid of them ages ago and just kept one for each pen. Then they would have been young and tender, now I think I'll have to slow cook them.
Still I guess this is our first "farmed" meat and they had a pretty good life up until last night.

Cockerel Swapping

I was going to call this post "cock swapping" but I then thought people finding it through search engines would be disappointed!

One of the guys at work was after a cockerel to run with his hens, so I gave him one of mine as I've meaning to kill them for ages and just haven't got round to it.

Off to a good life

I took the bird to work to swap him over there. The sparky said "Isn't it cruel to leave him in that cage all day?" (the cage had food and water just so you know). I said I've talked it through with the cockerel, and out of his two options and he seems happiest with this one.

Having friends who keep chickens can be handy when trying to breed from them. As you don't really want to use a cockerel from you own stock for the fear of inbreeding, so it's better to swap cockerels. I've big plans for the little Silkie cockerel I got from this guy last year and hopefully my little guy will perform for him and not show me up!