George is in prison

I don't have too much time to write. I have my "second wave" of kids coming in a half hour on the bus. My "first wave" is my oldest and youngest at home with me in the morning with my pre-schooler coming home at noon.

Anyway, I've been itchin' to tell the story about our rooster named "George." We received him way back when almost two years ago when we exchanged one of our hens for someone else's rooster, thinking we didn't have one single rooster in our bunch of chosen young chickens. Turns out, once they got a little older, we realized almost half of our chosen bunch had been roosters, so now we had the problem of having too many roosters! (We only needed one to cockle-doodle-doo and do the fun job of fertilizing all the eggs.) We held onto all the roosters for a while, but soon they became aggressive with one another- especially one that also became aggressive with us. He actually beat my husband with its big wings and flew up on the children. He was quite a mean, frightening fellow. The end of him is another blog, let me tell 'ya, but we're talking about George. OK. Back to George. Anyway, long story short, we ate one rooster, then gave away the rest, but carefully chose to keep George. He is an attractive Rhode Island Red rooster, a perfect mating pair for our lovely Rhode Island Red Hen, which a neighbor gave us. We wanted to have pure Rhode Island Red chicks, so we kept George. Thought it was a great decision, but later we regretted it. Turns out, George would end up having an overdose of chicken testosterone and his little pecker wound up a little too tight. He ended up doing his fertilizing job a bit too well, rubbing off the feathers of all our hens backs, especially our "Blondie" white hen, though he did spare his equal Rhode Island Red female counter-part. She, the latter, was too tough for him and wouldn't let him have a land on her. Blondie, on the other hand, was a total wet noodle for him and submitted to him to her own demise. She became scared of him, but instead of getting tough and pecking him away or running away, she would just crouch to the ground and let him have at it. She looked like a half grilled chicken walking around- especially in the hot summer months. You could have just smeared some marinade on her back and let her get nice and aromatic. I felt so horrible for her and tried everything to make her life better, but she wouldn't be saved. First, I tried putting her in a separate area, but the lady kept flying back over the fence to her abuser. She was like an abused woman who would keep going back to her abusive husband! Then I bought a pink dog outfit for her to cover her back and hiney, but her wings wouldn't fit in the leg holes! I gave up on helping her for a while, but then once when my Dad visited, he suggested either roasting George, as he said he wasn't a normal-acting rooster, or putting Blondie out in the yard outside the fenced-in area. Well, I didn't have the heart to roast George, as we're really only raising chickens for their eggs, so we put Blondie out "in the green." She did well for a couple of days, but unfortunately had no safe coop to go into at night. Long story short, she disappeared and that was that. I hate to say I felt relieved. I'd tried to do everything for that gal and nothing had worked.

Well, once Blondie was gone, George had to put his pecker in other places so he continued rubbing the feathers off the backs of other hens. A couple of weeks ago, I finally got so sick of having pitiful looking hens, I asked my daughter, S, to "put him in prison." We had a newly build up area all fenced in all the way up to 8 feet, so now he couldn't fly out. Yeah! My hens are liberated! And it is a joy to see their feathers growing back. Their backs look like ones of a porcupine, but hopefully they'll look normal soon. My son is excited about fattening up George for dinner. He's feeding him an extra portion every day and giggles over it.

George doesn't even know the fate that awaits him. Stay in tune...