Cold & Crying

Butcher day is never easy, but today was especially hard because we butchered the flock that has been with us for over two years.  To prepare, we went through the coops and pulled out all the old chickens, then all the roosters that had gotten through the last cull, and finally we had to decide about the hens.  We have a lot of hens left, but we figured that we had enough for today and we'd keep all the hens and see how it goes.

We got all set up and started the process about 9:30am.  One of my twins sat in the pen with the chickens to help catch them.  Over behind the barn, we could hear her sobbing and weeping.  First we did the young roosters.  I could tell when my husband got the first old hen because the weeping increased dramatically. 

After a while, I grew concerned that all that wailing was upsetting the chickens and not doing my daughter any good.  The other twin, who had been helping and handling everything very matter-of-factly, traded places with her.  Once in the pen, she started crying too. 

And then it started to snow and rain on us.  It was 36ºF and windy.  My feet were somewhere between frozen and numb.  I comforted myself that at least I didn't have to worry about the chicken meat getting too warm.

We did 26 birds.  Of the 13 hens, only 4 had developing eggs inside them.  The others were probably molting or had just stopped laying.  That made me feel better about culling them.  Now we don't have to feed those girls who weren't doing much. 

Now that the day is over, we are all exhausted and still not fully warmed up.   My feet have that tingle from being too cold for too long.  After crying so incessantly this morning, my twins are giddy and smiling.  They got all sorrow of the event out of them, and some extra it seems!

We have over 30 hens left.  We may do another butcher day, or we may just keep them for laying.  Right now I'm leaning toward keeping them (which is really the do nothing option).