So.... a few months ago....we had 200 three day old chicklings delivered to the farm. 150 hens.....50 roosters. Our good neighbors down the road was in on this order......they got all the roosters and 50 hens. The shipping vendor always separates the two sexes.
I myself cannot determine the sex of a three day old chicks. On Google....there are hundreds of pages with the question: how do I determine the sexes? So .....I am not alone with this lack of poultry knowledge.......and we have had chickens for six years now!
Last week.....all of sudden......we got 18 roosters in the yard. This is not good. We lost on feeding them for four months and the lost on future egg sales. Now I have to rid the roosters which I truly hate doing.....but I simply cannot keep them.
The best time to capture these chickens is at night...as they sleep on their perches. I found that in the past....my flashlight got them all roused up.....like someone sticking their flashlight in your face in the middle of the night. The reaction is not pleasant......same with the chickens.
Tonight something new was learned to make farm life a little easier. I used my hiking LED headlamp with the red light. The chickens remain docile and the pulling of the roosters was a piece of cake. Much better than dealing with panic in the coop....or worst...running around the chicken yard with a net (which never works).
I expect a lot of complaints in the morning from the hens.....that those darn red eye aliens were in the coop again.
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