Eight years ago, I was eight months pregnant, and inundated by too many young roosters. I decided something needed to be done. I was learning quickly what happens if you wait too long to deal with an abundance of roosters — they start attacking the hens, each other and you. It’s a no-win situation. I’d also learned that no one wants a young rooster. You can’t even give them away. Since roosters are born at the same rate as hens, you either have to butcher them or move farms. Or, and this was the option we eventually chose, stop keeping roosters, and instead buy female chicks at the feed store in the spring.
That fateful day eight years ago I still hadn’t figured all this out yet, though. So instead, I rounded up a neighbor to help with the job of dispatching the increasingly aggressive bunch of male chickens that were threatening to take over the coop. Back then, though I wanted to think I was tough enough to handle all aspects of ranch life, unaliving roosters was still more than I could bear. My neighbor brought his hatchet, but I did the rest of the work myself. It was a long, exhausting day, and at the end of it I had a freezer full of chickens I didn’t really want to eat.
I haven’t had to butcher chickens since. But, this spring, when I let the kids pick out six babies each from a small, local hatchery whose only option was unsexed chicks, I knew I was setting myself up for another butchering day come fall. Unlike eight years ago, however, I know now I am not, and probably will never be, ready to kill an animal unless it is in self-defense.
What I didn’t predict is that in addition to harassing me and each other, this batch of roosters would be the noisiest I’ve ever encountered. They didn’t just crow at dawn or dusk, but in the darkest part of the night, in the hottest of the midday sun, and if one started crowing, they all joined in.
I also couldn’t have predicted that the chicks would be more than half roosters, so the poor hens wouldn’t have a day of peace once everyone started reaching maturity. Equally horrible, these roosters did not openly attack me, but would sneak up behind me and strike when I was least expecting it.
Not all the time, mind you. Rather, they’d do it infrequently enough that I’d forget I needed to check every shadowy corner of the barn while doing chores. When my guard was down one or more would come fluttering up wildly, ready to peck or scratch.
It was, in a word, miserable. Well, butchering day came this past weekend, and though it came several weeks later than it should have for all the aforementioned reasons, it was just in time for me to be so fed up with the roosters that I didn’t feel nearly as bad about it as I had eight years ago. I recruited a good friend who used to run a hatchery, and who comes from a family of hunters, so whatever squeamishness I still retain didn’t slow us down much. Within a few hours, I once again had chicken in the freezer.
A lot has changed in eight years. A lot has stayed the same. I still can’t imagine butchering chickens on a regular basis, but at one point during the morning my friend stopped to check and make sure I wasn’t feeling too upset. I realized I was ok, and it wasn’t just because of the surprise attacks either.
“I think this feels easier because I’m less afraid of dying than I used to be,” I told her. After over a decade on the ranch, and nearly that long writing about this topic, I finally understand that dying really is part of living, and suddenly the bittersweetness of this fact feels a whole lot more sweet than bitter. We don’t get to keep these bodies forever, but my goodness it is an epic adventure wearing them for a while.
