Round Two Stew

Round Two Stew - Part 1

End result:

Gael Glen Farm Specialty: Round Two Stew

How we got here is a long story.

It all started one sunny summer day with a rooster named Cornelius....

For us, the hardest part of operating a hobby farm is "cull day".  Ugh, it even sounds horrible.  We like to think of ourselves as more of a "luxury retirement home" for animals and this approach works well for us most of the time.  So far, the vast majority of our hens have aged here with dignity laying us the occasional egg until they died of natural causes.

However, there have been a few instances over the years where we have been in possession of a bird (or birds) who are just not suitable to remain with us for the long haul.  The first time this happened was the day our young rooster, Cornelius, went crazy.  Up to this point, Cornelius had been a model bird.  He was a surprise from the bird breeder (he was supposed to be a girl) but he turned out to be quite a delight with his lovely red tail feathers and musical (though hilariously feeble) "Uh, uh-uh, ah, ooooo!" at all times of the day.

Unfortunately, one morning when I opened the coop door, Cornelius came roaring out of the hatch, raised his spurs and attacked all ducks in sight.  I have no idea what led to this overnight insane hatred for all creatures of the anas platyrhynchos domesticus subspecies but if left to his own devices there would have been a mass duck genocide on Gael Glen Farm.  This led to cull day #1.  Participant: one demented rooster.  We felt a little bad about it but we ate him as a delicious feast of coq au vin.

Over the past month, we have been gearing up for cull day #2; it takes us a while to work up the nerve.  Our problems began with the appearance of half eaten eggs each afternoon in the nesting boxes.  Up until this point we had experienced the occasional broken egg but what was happening now was clearly a calculated, systematic breaking and eating of the eggs.

With no predators in sight to blame we turned our investigative eyes to our own chickens to try to "Sherlock Holmes" out the feathery culprits.  Using coloured leg bands and systematic isolation of suspicious hens (namely our New Hampshire red hens) we discovered that it was not only one hen participating in the undesirable egg eating but all three!

Red hen with a red leg band.

After consulting with experts (via the internet, of course) we learned that it is very, very hard to break hens of cannibalistic behaviour and if left unchecked it can spread throughout the entire flock.  Soon all of our chickens could be eating their eggs - definitely not the direction we want to go in.

So, for the past month the three red chickens have been in "isolation" during the day on the "human" side of the coop.  They have been busy getting into trouble in the backyard (namely digging up all of Ian's onion bulbs and a large portion of the lawn over the septic bed), running away from Emily and laying their own eggs in a make shift nest they fashioned out of a hay bale.  These hens seem to have no desire to eat their own eggs, yet the temptation to eat the eggs from the other chickens is simply too much for them to resist.

Red hen on the "human" side of the coop.

Red hen in her make shift nest on top of the hay bale.

We have been separating the red hens from the rest of the flock every morning and returning them to the flock every evening once the eggs are collected and there have been no eaten eggs to speak of.  However, if left with the flock we always find broken, half eaten eggs.

Apparently the grass is always greener on the other side - the other hens were jealous
of the red hens and would stare longingly through the wire
at them on the other side of the coop.

Obviously, daily separation of the three red hens is not a long term, sustainable solution; especially when we are away and a chicken sitter has to take care of our feathery friends.  While we are willing to do it, we would never expect someone else to chase these red rascals down each day and put them in isolation.

To be continued....