Spring Time 'where there is live stock there is dead stock'

Another of the major lessons of the spring centered around Mr
Aitkenhead the cockerel. What I learned was that sometimes you have
to do things you do not want to do, but must be done! I had always had
a good relationship with him, we hand feed our poultry and he fed from
me first.
My mother had had problems earlier in the year were he had gone for
her leg, on another occasion I stepped in when he appeared to be
going for her again, two isolated incidents, or so I thought!
Problems started when he went for my legs when I had fed them on
morning and was walking away. A lot of wing flapping and leg clawing,
luckily I had my cut off waders on.
This happened every time I fed them so Debbie took to feeding the
chickens so hopefully the attacks would stop. They didn't in fact he
actually came looking for me.
I took advice from breeders and did what people recommended even
picking him up and cuddling him! Needless to say this didn't work and
he wasn't backing down each time I had to.
I started to worry about the kids, my youngest is only four and he was
attacking about her face height and wasn't backing down he just kept
on coming. I know he was probably only feeling threatened by me but I
couldn't take the chance and could not just stop in the house.
It all ended when we had been to seek our weekly shopping and
returned to find him actually waiting by the front door. Something he
had never done. Anyway I got out he went at me twice so we ended up
having chicken later that night.
I know it sounds matter of fact but I really hated doing it as he was a
beautiful cockerel and I had hoped to have used him for many a year in breeding.
As is generally the case with missed opportunities one of the Light
Sussex hens went broody a few weeks later then another. We ended
up bringing in fertile eggs to hatch our own chicks, whilst also rearing
some New Hampshire Red day old chicks to provide us with a
cockerel.
It seems strange now worrying about getting an incubator when all of
our hens went broody over the spring and summer, especially when it
is such hard work rearing chicks once the novelty wears off! A good
lesson for the future 'leave it to mother nature'.
One last thing we learned during the spring was that grass cuttings
can be fatal! I took delivery of about 10 black plastic bags full of grass
cuttings intending to throw them on the compost heap as a favour to
someone!
I found that the hens enjoyed scratching about in the grass so dropped
a bag near to the chicken house. Unfortunately the two youngest found
three chicks playing in the grass and thought they were trying to get
warm by making a nest so covered them up to keep them warm.
By the time they had innocently told us what they had done two of the
chicks were dead, although unbelievably one was just about alive so
that went straight back under the mother hen, and grew to be a very
nice hen herself.