Culling This is a blog of happenings in my family, with my kids, and with the politics of the world. If you don't get satire you should probably stop reading right now. Warning: I tend to ramble on, and on, and on...

Today I culled a chicken for the second time. The first had been a chick with splayed legs who couldn't walk all that well. This time it was Tony Stark. The hole in his chest from the attack that killed Evie just hadn't healed, despite our regular treatments of hydrogen peroxide. My original thought on the matter was that, even if he didn't ever completely heal, any chicken that can survive with a hole in their chest is a strong bird indeed. And a strong rooster would make strong chicks! But Tony's chest wound eventually demoted him to the bottom of the pecking order, where the hens would peck at him viciously when they caught him out and about and the other roosters would, well, let's just say there's a reason there was always a white residue on Tony's tailfeathers. All this abuse led Tony to spend most of his day hiding in a nesting box and we have 31 chickens that will be reaching maturity and need to starting laying in those nesting boxes in early October. I liked Tony, but realistically he was never going to be able to mount a hen so it didn't matter if he was good breeding stock. So I took him down to the creek and held his head under. This made less of a mess than head removal and we weren't planning to eat rotting chicken anyway. Killing a bird for meat is one thing, but killing a bird just because it's a weak link in your flock seems dicier morally. I think that's why I put off the decision so long. The babies getting close to maturity forced my hand. The Light Brahmas are as big as any of the full grown hens now and have already taken to setting in the nesting boxes. We needed to get Tony out of their way. Not a decision I enjoyed making though for sure.