Jodee Taylor: Chicken ratio was skewed

Jodee Taylor

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Jodee Taylor

May 2, 2011

By JODEE TAYLOR jtaylor@record-eagle.com The Record Eagle Sun Apr 15, 2012, 01:00 PM EDT

Ten years ago, we got two dozen chicks in the mail.

We now have seven grown-up birds, and I'd be hard put to remember if the DNA of the original flock is present in any of them.

The last of the original flock, Shadow, died about a year ago. She'd lived through several predator attacks, raised a few chicks of her own and succumbed, I guess, to the all-purpose "natural causes."

Each chicken's death has been very sad, whether violent or gentle. The night a neighborhood dog got into the barn was especially bad, sparing only Shadow and -- inexplicably because our ducks aren't all that bright -- one duck.

Between that original shipment and now, we've acquired chickens from Freecycle, friends who didn't want them anymore, a school that closed and, my personal favorite, nature.

By that I mean they hatched on our farm.

One reason I don't like to get into chicken genetics is that a rooster couldn't care less if a hen is his mother, sister or daughter. My husband scoffs at me when I worry about inbreeding, and I guess he's onto something because the chicks that result are healthy, with no extra appendages.

But last month I had to do something I never thought I'd do. I culled.

We had a batch of chicks hatch in the fall (way too late in the year, but they turned out to be hearty, northern Michigan birds and did just fine). Out of the four chicks, three were roosters.

The recommended ratio in a flock is one rooster to 15 hens. We ended up, by the time we could tell what sex the birds were, with four roosters and five hens.

Those poor, much-loved hens. And our poor ears, with four roosters crowing at random, frequent intervals.

So we sucked it up and offered a couple roosters to some friends who have no trouble being real farmers and not treating chickens as pets.

My son was on spring break and offered to transport the roosters. After much chasing and squealing (by the humans), we managed to wrangle the two doomed birds into a cage, which we then wrangled into the car. He dropped me off at work, discussing the entire way if roosters get carsick and what kind of music they enjoy the most. (Pop music was a hit; reggae was not.) I said a quick goodbye to Sid and Nancy (we named them when they were young and didn't figure out their sex until they were well past puberty); off they went.

I tried to put them out of my mind and concentrate on how much happier and relaxed the remaining birds were. There was a lot less posturing and establishing of a pecking order (they really do that) with the remaining birds, even though our ratio is still off (two roosters, five hens). The surviving roosters, a father and son for those keeping track, have established a fragile peace, and the hens actually have time to eat bugs and lay eggs.

The culling, while not fun, wasn't the end of the world, at least not for me.

However, the following Sunday evening I got a distressing text: "The roosters were delicious!"

Whimper.

Jodee Taylor can be reached at jtaylor@record-eagle.com.