Tomorrow we harvest a rooster or three.

[hippywife]

We have just been keeping chickens for eggs the past couple of years. We've always gotten them from a co-worker of my husband's who raised them. He decided he wasn't going to raise them anymore and get rid of his existing flock so we took five of them. Three of them have turned out to be roosters. At first it was only one of them that we found trying to crow. About three weeks ago, two others started crowing. It was kind of funny at first but them got to be really obnoxious and annoying. We knew we needed to get rid of them because we have too few hens, only nine, for that many roosters. The guy doesn't work there anymore and lives to far away to take them back to him and he doesn't have his flock anymore so no way to exchange them out for more hens.

Now, of course, they started mating the hens and they've picked on one so horribly she may not survive, so we separated all the roosters from the hens last night and are keeping them apart.

A guy I work with is supposed to buy two of the roosters but doesn't want the third. We are going to process the one tomorrow, and if he doesn't call me today, we'll process the other two, as well. My husband has field dressed small animals so it won't be as big a deal for him, but this will be my first time ever doing anything like this. It has to be done and I do feel it necessary to help him do it and be involved in the process.

This will be a totally new experience for me.