Roosters, Rats & Bobcats, Oh My!

It took us awhile to figure it out but out of the 12 chicks we raised, 3 were roosters, possibly 4. Having this many roosters is just not possible. They were starting to fight and try to kill each other. They were also driving the hens a little crazy. We knew what we had to do but had never culled chickens before. My husband had a good friend who wasn't afraid of the procedure come over and help him. His friend went to get the roosters that were going to be culled. There were 4 of the Plymouth rocks and we thought one was a hen. The largest rooster we decided to keep for protection for the hens. The friend grabbed what he thought was the other two roosters and hung them upside down. They slit the throats and drained them. Then they put them in a large pot of boiling water and removed the feathers and insides. They bagged them up and put them in the frig. My husband then went to check on the chickens and discovered two roosters in the pin. Apparently, either the friend picked up the female Plymouth rock and they accidentally killed her or we were wrong and she was a he. Anyway, now they had to kill another rooster! We are down to 8 hens and 1 very large crazy rooster that is not afraid to take on humans. We have to walk around with a rake if he is out of the pen or he will try to attack us. He likes to start his cockadoodling at about 4:30am. I am a light sleeper and it has taken me a long time to get used to it but I think I finally have. Other than that, we are glad to have him because we think he scares off would be predators with his loud sounds and disposition. The hens don't seem to mind him either. Lately we have discovered that rats are not afraid of him and apparently they are really good at sneaking in the coop to steal food at night without waking him up. Even though we buried hard wire all around the coop at least a foot deep, they have burrowed a hole deeper than that and dug a tunnel into the coop. I have been trying to research ways to get rid of them without possible poisoning the chickens. So far, they have outsmarted our traps. We picked up a homeless kitten on Halloween (named Kit-Kat) that we hope will start catching and killing them. Right now, the rats are probably bigger than the cat.

One morning in the fall we woke to find the male duck missing. Later, our dog Marley came out of the woods carrying the head of the duck. My husband walked into the woods and found the rest of the duck body. It was decapitated with its breast meat removed. Whatever got the duck had to have climbed or jumped over a 4 foot fence, got the duck in its mouth and then jumped back over the fence with the duck to go kill it in the woods. I can imagine all the commotion woke up the rooster. The female duck spent the rest of her days pretty distraught and you could tell she missed her companion. We had to lock her in her Quack House at night so that whatever it was did not come back for her. We discovered some claw marks on the gate and coop and believe it may have been a bobcat. As time went on, we decided the best thing to do would be to cull the leftover duck. She was becoming a burden to put away every night and we had to leave her in there for a few days when we left town for the weekend. We were excited to eat the duck meat but after researching and following what seemed like a great recipe for pan-seared duck, it turned out to be awful. The meat was extremely tough and chewy. I had always heard that duck was really fatty but this duck had no fat on it. That may have been why it didn't turn out to well. We have decided not to have ducks anymore. They are cute but they make a huge mess and they stink really bad. You have to change their pool water all the time because it starts stinking and attracting flies. The algae is also a pain to clean. It just doesn't seem worth it to us. It's all part of the learning process!