I have atleast 6 silkie roos I need to rehome. I can find plenty of people to buy hens but those roos just won't leave, which makes me scared of rehoming any of my hens since it really is equal one roo to one hen. I really don't want to just "cull" them not being able to eat them. I am thinking of renting a space at the next bird swap and giving them away. What do you all do?
What does everyone do with all their roos?
LoraK, There is no real solution because even the ones you give away usually end up in places with owners who are ill prepared to are for them .... so their lives are short. Many folks cull the roos as soon as they are able to determine the sexing. I've seen very humane means of euthanizing; ether on cotton in a tight container. The little guys just go to sleep. There's always the grossly inhumane method I witnessed from the prior owner of my 1st group of Ameraucana hens. He would grab the roo by the head and spin and jerk the body of 10 lb Barred Rock roos ..... it was too real. It is cheap and reasonably quick but I question whether it was humane. Cattle get shot in the head or bludgeoned. There is the traditional hatchet and wood block. If they must die quick ... I recommend the ether on cotton balls in a small dark, air tight container method. I have Game Fowl. I will not sell roos alone. I anticipate selling pairs to only buyors wanting a flock next year.
See thats why I see myself with a flock of roos. I know my broad breasted turkeys are bred for the table, little fluffy with an attitude puffball dying for no reason?????? There is no way I could kill them for no apparent reason,other then they are males. Geez, I rehome birds (parrots) sometimes and I always ask for personal, vet reference home visit etc. A chicken what do you do? I truly wish it was easier to caponize (sp).
Maybe I can go to school for it
Photographer, you seem to be very smart with your money. With my indoor flock of parrots, dogs, cats and fish oh and the husband, money is not the issue, its more quality of life, and I don't want to be nursin the wounds everyday, week, and month.
I am hoping that someone that is to my liking wants the silkies roos. I went to that show a couple weeks ago and it wasn't pretty. I am not looking for a palace for them to live in, they are used to good food and lots of scraps and treats, a decent home is all I want
We (hubby didnt like it) cleaned out the frig and freezer. O-my did they get lots of treats, I cooked all the "old meat" in the freezer, cut into very small pieces and then feed it to them and the other animals.
I guess I am in need of a vat of bag balm if no one wants one of my roos
Lora, sometimes people separate the roos all by themselves and make a little roo flock, in which (allegedly at least!) they don't fight because there aren't gals to fight over. Maybe you could try that?
So far it is only apparent two of my birds are roos. Both are silkies. They started to fight and were being pretty rough with the women folk. I finally had to take one out and chose the one that is not nice to the humans either. LOL He spent one night by himself in the garage and I felt bad. Since we have two white silkie females, we put them in with him and they are all happy.
We also have a buff silkie roo and two buff females. They are still in with the other birds right now. If that starts to be a problem, the buffs will also get their own home. We had intended to take out the silkies anyway but having two silkie roos together, was not working.
I'm starting to get the feeling that I am going to have small breed specific coops all over the yard. LOL We aren't ready to get rid of the silkie men just yet, in case we decide to start hatching eggs. And honestly, we like to hear them crow every morning (afternoon, throughout the day LOL). :)
Well I know this isn't what you want to hear but there was someone on another forum who actually did recently post that after much trying to re-home extra roos they butchered the silkies. They posted pics etc of them cooked (not the killing process) and gave an opinion on the meat etc.... Said it was very good.
Many of the ppl on the board seemed appreciative as apparently they were faced with the same situation...... what do I do with silkies I can't place. I , personally, can't kill them to just get rid of them. If I kill them I feel they should be eaten.
As of yet I have not made a decision as to what I will do with my extra silkies. I don't know if it's size or cuz they're so dang cute but they seem more like pets than livestock.
I plan one more cull of extra cockerels for freezer camp before winter hits.... I have to wait until we are done cutting wood for the winter. And I want the temps to drop as I find butchering more tolerable when it isn't hot and humid. At this time we are having unseasonable weather in October. Not that I am complaining.
Other then eating them or trying to give them away at poultry shows I wonder if you could put an ad in the local paper or craigslist for your area. Maybe list them as ideal house pets. If you took pics and made a flyer and posted that at pet shops and grocery store bulletin boards I bet you'd have atleast 1 or 2 bites. Promote them as an exotic pet not a chicken...lol.
If trying to home them to chicken ppl then make a policy sold only in pairs or trios. If someone wants a hen bad enough they will take the cockerel.... what they do with them well who knows.
Good luck. Let us know what happens with placement. Like I said I have given some away or placed some in trios/pairs only. But I still have a few I need to decide what I will am going to do and no more hens to spare.
Julie
LoraK, I too had okay luck separating the roos into a small flock of 8. They did not fight and sorta claimed and wandered about in separate areas of the yard. My problem was the yard was not fully fenced off and 4 of the roos & 1 guinea hen got eaten by neighbor dogs who mistakenly wandered in. I took it personal from that point and loaded my shotgun. Since then there are 3 fewer dogs and 1 less coyote in our immediate neighborhood and I have not lost any more of my now 30 big hens & roos or guineas (the coyote got 2 adult Game Fowl that run loose 90% of the daytime on my best friend and next door neighbors pasture property bordering our shared driveway). They sleep in my cedar trees on our side of the driveway. I claim 50% of the Game Fowl and so does my neighbor... we share 58 Game Fowl. I could have built one lousy gate and likely prevented the loss of the poultry. All I had was a 4X8ft plywood board leaned up against the rose arbor entrance. It didn't work simply because it blew down. After stringing 1500 ft of welded wire ..... I'm a bit out of gas. A gate is my next outside chore on my "to do list" after rebuilding a 250 sq ft outdoor cottage/bunkhouse this summer. Now my 18 yr old college freshman son has a separate "almost home" but he's still just 80 ft from our main house. He's also 50 ft closer to the new chicken coop. In May we kicked 50 chickens out of the messy dilapidated former horse stall/carriage house building. We gutted it and refinished it in the same rustic fashion. I recently added a 100 sq ft covered porch with a skirting. Its now an outdoor cottage ..... sounds kinda classy .... but it really isn't .... just a quiet separate BR.
This message was edited Oct 6, 2007 5:55 AM
Our new coop!
The former chicken coop from inside ! Notice the little chicken exit door!
I'm in the same position. My spring flock is growing up and I have 3 young roos that need to go. I think I may end up taking them to the livestock auction this evening. I hate to do that because it takes a lot of time to stand in line waiting your turn to sell, and nobody pays much for roos, but at least they will go to people who want them.
My two cents worth...."rehoming," unless you know someone personally that will take them, is generally synonymous with "getting rid of them so I don't have to face killing them"...You feel better not having done the dirty deed, but, frankly, they will most likely be killed anyway, and you have no control over what they will go through pre-death, or during the killing process.
I don't keep roosters for that and many other reasons, however, if I did, I think the best option is to humanely kill them. Otherwise, you don't know where they will end up (cockfighting? dogtraining aid? falcon training aid? inhumanely cared for? abandoned? fed live to exotics?), and they will most likely lose their life very shortly anyway, albeit after great suffering in life for awhile. If you hatched them, you at least owe them the respect of a great life (however short) and a quick and painless death (if you absolutely can't keep them)... Hope I haven't offended anyone, but I feel strongly that we need to respect all animals' lives, making sure that we never cause them needless fear and suffering just to meet our needs. A humane death--whether with ether or a hatchet or whatever you feel is appropriate--is just that. A death without fear or suffering.
Well, I suppose that could be true, but I like to think there are more good people in this world than bad. I think there are more good people out there who take good care of their animals, and it is a small minority that neglect or abuse animals. I took my Buff Orpington roosters to the livestock auction and got $10 each for them. There was a long line of folks there selling chickens and ducks and turkeys and guineas and rabbits, which all happens before they auction the big stuff, horses, goats, sheep, etc. I did not see any poultry in that auction that look abused or neglected. Most folks there buy and sell poultry to maintain a good flock. They get rid of the extras and buy new blood to keep their flock healthy and to widen the gene pool. Every spring I go there and buy a new rooster to mate with my hens so the offspring will be a good line with no inbreeding. I think that is basically the purpose of having a livestock auction.
The only reason I see to kill your chickens is to eat them, and frankly I can buy a chicken already cleaned and roasted at the grocery store for $4.00. It is more cost effective for me to sell the extras.
yotedog, I have to agree with you. Anyone buying only roos I would suspect of using for training for cockfighting, falconry, fed to constrictors. So humane euthanizing or butchering for food seems the best thing. By the way, did you know that all silky bones are black?
Very tasty, though small, but we hunt and eat ptarmigan up here and they are just a bit larger, but darker meat and gamier.
Hmstyl--I like your positive attitude, and I so hope that you are right and I am wrong, but I work in an animal-related field and I see too much. Yes, there are many, many wonderful folks out there, like you, who care greatly about treating all animals in a humane manner. But I prefer not to take the risk that even one of the creatures in my life ever suffers because I passed it along...Yes, some folks do want roosters to be just that--chick daddies and hen defenders!!! But, alas, when you give them away free or sell so cheap to strangers, you never know...do you? And that is the part that bothers me...
ceeadsalaskazone3 (wow, what a moniker--thats a handful!). No, I didn't know Silky bones were black....very cool tidbit!
I think it really depends where you live. I have never ever seen dog fighting in the white mountains of NH, everyone knows everyones business. Eating them that might be a different story, if I was to give them to someone and knew they would be eaten thats a different story. If I cannot find any homes that I like then they will stay here in live in a group.
After that horrible fight weekend there hasn't been any since. Maybe I freaked out and it was just a bunch of fights to find their place in the flock, only time will tell
Yeah, I think you need to know your area and hopefully your buyer. I think everyone has made a good point. I am trying to convince my friend, who is getting his PhD in molecular biology to work on making a chicken who hatches out a 75/25% ratio females and males. Wouldn't that be awesome?
yotedog, I was one of the first members back when DavesGarden started and wanted my moniker to inform at a glance most of my info. Little did I know that my location and zone were automatically included, at least back then. Now I see many don't have their zones displayed. Also my name is Carol Eve Eads and any locals that see my posts pretty much know who I am. I'm not into the stealth approach most have with vague identities. Living where few lock their doors or remove keys from their cars gives me confidence and ease of living open and unafraid of intrusion or vulnerability which seems more prevalent in the "lower 48."
By the way, are coyotes still ranging that far east, or do you have another story on your own username?
And boy, were we suprised at dinner time with the silky dinner and the bone thing!
LoraK, If you have an established chicken group and all of a sudden dropped a roo or more into the chicken coop ..... that would tend to cause friction ..... quite a bit of it. There isn't much meat to a Silkie. I suppose one can eat anything. Silkies are somewhere between Large Fowl and Bantam. The blackest chicken around is the black boned, guts, eyes, comb, beak, wattle, black everything from Indonesia ...... Cemani or something. They're bred and used for obscure religious tribal animal sacrifice. Just what we all want o read about.
On another site a woman ate her extra roos, she said they were unique tasting. and everyone in my yard were chicks at the same time, the guineas have a about 4 weeks between them
Photographer, is that the "Sumatran Black", of which I've heard is the largest chicken? I'm just Not into that black magic, read the animal entrails, gobbledegoop mystic BS!
Carol
Carol in Seward, No it is not. It is a far more obscure variety of chicken than the Sumatra. No doubt the variety is reasonably close in description to a Sumatra but they do not look that much alike ... other than the outward coloring. I've read that a man from Holland (recall your history that Indonesia was a Dutch colony) had/has been trying to get the characteristics refined in a personal flock of poultry or eggs imported from Indonesia. Cemani is is the place name of the village where the breed was 1st recognized/described by educated foreigners. The problems like many inbred chickens have is the % of infertility. The original group of Iowa Blues theoretically came from 1 Pheasant and 1 Barred Rock hen. Infertility was the biggest hurdle in getting that breed going.
Hey Ceeads.....'Yotedog' is in honor of a much beloved dog, who looked like a coyote.....but, yes, we still have coyotes, foxes etc--you know, all the chicken eaters!!!
Yote, we have coyotes ranging from the Brooks Range south. North of that is the realm of the arctic fox and wolves of course seasonally following the caribou.
I desparately want a Silkie Roo for my girls. I have a small back yard flock of Dominique hens and one Nankin hen. I heard Silkie Roos are sweet. I wish I could take one of yours. It'd be spoiled rotten in a week!
well if it was cheap tp ship you'd have one!! I'd ship you one!
How much do you think the shipping would be? I'd be willing to cover the cost to have a sweet little fuzz-butt.
I will call and check it out