Mayhem and execution-style killing in Mayberry

For all the gruesome titles of posts in this blog, they actually fit, innocuous though this site may be.

First the mayhem, another sad chicken tale. A raccoon got the five small chickens—the two polish and the three bantams. We had been keeping them in a separate cage because the big hens were picking on them, and the other night I didn't notice that their cage door was ajar. I found the bodies, well, three of them, the next morning. As I've said before, predation is part of raising chickens. I baited the live traps with two of the bodies, but as of yesterday afternoon nothing had taken the bait, so to speak.

Now the execution. It's a fact of chicken life that you need only about one rooster for every 20 or so hens. Good life for the surviving rooster, eh? Well, roosters will kill each other if you let them all live in the same compound, and the traditional solution to the problem is to invite all but one of the roosters to dinner. It was time last week (they have started crowing, but haven't started fighting), but Val's grandparents came down and filled the freezer to overflowing, so we had no place for our "guests" to await dinner. Yesterday was the day. We segregated the three loudest (This is easy to do. You let the hens out in the morning, but not the roosters. The coop is small enough that I could select whomever I wanted, then open the door so the hens could return to lay their eggs) and put them in the now vacant bantam cage.

Chickens tend to be fairly cooperative about being handled, once you catch them. I can tuck one under an arm, confining her wings, and they ride along pretty contentedly. That's how we carry the hens. Or we let them perch on our fist, falconry style. The hens are pretty tame.

I wasn't so concerned about the feelings of the roosters, so I carried them upside down, by their feet. For some reason, chickens don't seem to mind this mode of transportation, either. It's like they're captivated by everything being upside down.

I got to do all the work myself. The lady staying with us right now is a City Girl. She brags about collecting eggs and tossing out scratch. Her idea of outdoor work is to work on a tan. Don't even mention snakes in her hearing. (No lie. Don't.) So Val had to take her out shopping so she wouldn't be around to watch or hear me prepare chicken dinner. I used the kosher method of dispatching them. Takes about 25 minutes per bird.

We have three remaining roosters. Two will have to join humans for dinner. If anyone wants to assist me, I'll give them one.

And if anything sets foot in one of those traps, there'll be another execution-style slaying.
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Not that I forgot, but I couldn't fit it into the title: Sunday I got to do a nice 190-mile bike ride. Our boy is at a 2-week Civil Air Patrol camp at McDaniel college in Westminster, MD. 2/3 of the way down there he realized he had forgotten his dress uniform. I made the delivery Sunday morning. The road after you get past Baltimore is pretty nice, and the map looks like it would make a nice cross-country trip next time.