Saturday, April 29, 2006

Rooster Tales

It looks like Clint has gone rooster mad for he has acquired not just one but two new cocks! There is a bit of a story behind the second one.

The first one is a very handsome Sussex rooster and was bought from a man who specialises in rearing Sussex and Rhode Island fowl. This fellow has had a happy corn fed, free range start in life. The other rooster has had a much tougher time of it.




The Sussex Rooster is a very handsome fellow


Battery chickens go through a lot of checks before they are squashed five or six into a cage. First of all they’re sexed at a day old and all the males are killed and the females sent to be reared up to laying age. They’re sexed again at 16 weeks and any male that gets through the initial checks is disposed of. This fellow survived both these checks and spent a year in the cages. The farmer knew there was a rooster in there for he could hear him but he never did find out where the rooster was. It would have been like looking for a needle in a haystack. Eventually after 13 months, the end of that particular lot’s productive life, the lone rooster was found. The farmer took pity on him and decided to let him live until the whole lot were taken for slaughter. Before this happened Clint heard the tale and offered him a home. Lucky the Rooster has survived four brushes with death.

And it’s just as well that Clint is an early riser for two cocks crowing in the morning would be very hard to listen to.

This boy is a bad looking brute. And the rooster isn't much to look at either.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lovely birds. I've always wanted to live somewhere I could have a few hens scratching about and some runner ducks but still haven't landed in the right place.

One of these days...

Nelly said...

It's taken me a while to get here too.