Now that our juvies have moved to the “big house,” that leaves us with only our late-in-the-season feathered bantams who will now need to be transitioned out. The first step will be to move them to our separate “transitional coop” until they are ready to be fully integrated with the rest of the flock. (Note: all are fully feathered and ready to be out in our starting-to-get-cool nights.
As it turned out, 3 of our 6 bantam chicks are male. If you recall, I had predicted 2 of them to be male based on feather sexing and while those 2 are indeed male, I missed one – so much for my mad sexing skills.
I met with the fellow who had given us the chicks and on Saturday, he’s willing to stop by and pick up the males so that they can go live on a farm until they will be harvested.I know, not a pleasant thought, but I’ve said many times (and I’ll say it many more times) roosters do not belong in residential backyard flocks.
Not even bantam roosters. They say that fences do not make good neighbors, well try having all-night and all-day squawking alarms and see how that adds a little stress to the neighborhood.
And while we all love these little chicks (honestly, the littlest ones have the biggest personalities) I don’t blame or even damn anyone for eating their chickens. It makes sense, raised chicken is so much cleaner than what I get in the grocery store.
Honestly, on some level I wish I could eat a bird that I’ve raised, but as my birds are here for stories, they’ve become characters and trusted friends of our family. To eat them would be a betrayal of the grandest order.
So instead, we’ll ship off our boy bantams for someone else to do the deed.
“You’re so mean, mom” said Emma last night at the dinner table as she helped herself to another piece of pork.
That little gray one in front? That’s one of the three.
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Wendy Thomas writes about the lessons learned while raising children and chickens in New Hampshire. Contact her at [email protected]
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