Dan and I gave the eat-your-own-meat thing a good solid try. We've raised and eaten 15 meat chickens, our pigs "the three Daves", the yearly turkey flock and quite a few sheep. And we will try again, I'm sure.
Yet we still manage to get overly attached, we feel sorry, we hesitate. In short we are too soft for farming. Bad, bad farmers.
Case in point: our One-Legged Rooster.
Back when I wrote about our ongoing poultry melodrama, this guy was "Vlad Vladikof, the black-bottomed rooster." Massive and proud, he skulked in the lower barn, crowing constant challenges at the more established Jaguar.
Then came a time the two fought. And fought... It didn't seem all that violent, a few scrabbly flutters and the dogs would come flying down the hill to break it up. (Quick aside: Even small farms have their own unique quirks and rhythms, busybody dogs intervening in the poultry soap opera is one of ours. Hey, it works. Usually...)
However, after one of these fights, Vlad came up lame. Worse than lame. His leg was so messed up he couldn't put any weight on it at all.
Now, there is nothing more pitiful than a one-legged rooster. No longer proud, Vlad hid in the barn, hopping to and from the feeder we set out for him.
We stopped calling him Vlad at all. Instead, he was "that poor guy" or "that poor rooster in the barn" and so on. His gaggle of outsider hens deserted him for the more sturdy roo in the coop.
We knew that we should end his misery. It's what any decent farmer should do. There was no way to make a splint, no way to catch him without bringing on a painful panic.
Clearly we lacked the correct mentality. And the poor one-legged guy in the barn hobbled through June.
Then one day last week, the guy was out in the sunlight. He isn't better, but he is putting weight down. he IS crowing challenges at Jaguar again (questionable rooster judgement is a subject for some other post) and for all our bad farmer technique, it appears he's pulled through.
***Pardon for the repeat picture, our camera is broken.
13 comments:
...Vlad sounds like a stud! A rooster with a lion's heart needs room to roam. Let that boy retire in style ;)
That was a fun read!
EL
i love this post and think you've done the rooster ego fine justice in your description.
Thanks so much, you guys. I have to say I really enjoy the roos-- especially naming them. Any name given a rooster automatically has panache!
This is a better-quality article as they all are. I make fun of been wonder wide this an eye to some beat now. Its great to receive this info. You are fair and balanced.
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I'm afraid I'd be one of those bad farmers along with you. The most I could do would be to eat the eggs that the chickens left for me. As to pigs . . . nope. Couldn't do one of those in. I raise my own vegetables and that's the extent of my good farming.
We raised our own cows and pigs and chickens on our hobby farm. It was tough to see the animals come back in packages, and the first time we ate it, my dad said, "mooo."
I would be a terrible farmer.
Ann
I don't have a farm but its fun to read
visit my blog and follow each other.
I love this blog!
We butchered 5 chickens last year and couldn't eat chicken for a few weeks after that. It is an emotional thing to do, and the smell also permeates EVERYTHING!
I can empathize!
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I would love to say that we are tougher than that, but sometimes, one of them just gets to you. Hence, our farm that intended to remain rooster free now has......Captain Yellow Legs. Long story,similar lines, lol.
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