Zander’s Rooster PTSD and How We Butchered our First Chicken (rooster)

The first year with our chickens we had 10 which, to me, at the time was a lot of dang chickens! We had a couple roosters in the mix. If you are unfamiliar, as I was, roosters can be quite nasty! Let me put it this way, we nicknamed one of them a*$hole. Well one day I was inside picking up the massive toy explosion on the main level of our house when I heard the most terrified screams coming from Zander outside. I thought for sure he had cut a limb off or something! I raced out the backdoor just in time to see… you guessed it… a*$hole puffed up, with wings out, in a full on sprint chasing poor Zander (who was 3 at the time) through the yard. Zander is screaming at the top of his lungs, which unfortunately just egged on a*$hole to chase him more. I grabbed a basketball that was laying in the yard and chucked it as hard as I could at that damn rooster. I missed, but it distracted him enough that Zander could run toward me and I snatched him up and took him inside to house. The poor kid was completely out of breath and terrified! He just kept saying “I no like the chickens any more!” Later that week, that damn bird came after me and later that very day, the day he came at me, we butchered our first chicken. Yep… you come after the baby and Momma, the one who feeds and cares for you… you won’t come out alive!

On the positive side of things, the boys learned how to butcher a chicken, well rooster, that day and also that roosters are best cooked in the slow cooker! Zander hated a*$hole ever since he chased him, so he didn’t mind this so much. However, my animal lover, lover of all of the chickens and roosters, Ryker, struggled a bit with this process. Hunter, my oldest, was mostly intrigued with the different things that occurred during the butchering process. I’ll spare you those details. I’m still too much city and not enough country to recount the entire process for you! Still makes me a little uneasy.

We ended up losing what remained of our original 10. Well we didn’t lose them, they were eaten by a dog we had rescued, not knowing at the time, she had an insatiable taste for farm animals. We quickly found her a city home! But not before the chickens were all gone. That was tough for me. I raised them from chicks. However, the next spring I got 20 chicks to raise up into layers for me. The chickens are more-or-less my endeavor… I love my chickens and the boys do too! Well Zander is warming up to them at least… No more roosters for us!