A Rooster in the Hen House...

We took the leap a few months ago and officially became the owners of five "backyard chickens."  The experience has been interesting, but mostly fun, so far.  A little before Easter Kent took Kaden and they picked out five little baby chicks.  We have Dottie, Buttercup, Daisy, Hoppy, and Penny.  They were so cute and fuzzy...

The chickens spent about the first five weeks inside our house.  They all lived in a big box (the one that the trampoline came in) in the laundry room.  Towards the end of the five weeks, I was getting pretty desperate for Kent to finish the chicken coop. The chickens were starting to jump up on the side of the box and just sit there.  None of them had really jumped out, though, so it seemed manageable.

One day I had my friend Song over.  After seeing the chickens, she asked if she should close the laundry room door.  I said, "No, they never jump out. It will be fine."  About an hour later, I walked downstairs and was shocked to see two chickens in the bathroom, one in Amy's room, and about 30 piles of poop on the laundry room floor!  I was shocked.  Apparently they were willing and able to jump out of the box.  Since Kent was leaving for the weekend, he quickly constructed a lid for me to cover the box with and the following week, they chicks moved to their new coop.

And now, after almost 3 months with these creatures, we have settled into somewhat of a routine.  In the morning we let them out of the coop.  They hang out in their yard all day, and in the evening they go back in the coop for the night. There were a couple of weeks there where we had to run around chasing the chickens at night with a broom and our bare hands trying to get them back into the coop. One night Kent was out of town and I was out there in the middle of a thunderstorm and hail desperately chasing scared chickens all over the yard and threatening to leave them on their own if they didn't get in the f%$#&* coop!  So, there was some cursing and there was some questioning as to why we ever decided to get chickens in the first place.  After a couple weeks, however, we have learned easier ways to coax the ladies back into the coop and things are going much more smoothly at night.

So, with a few hiccups, this owning chickens thing has gone pretty well smoothly except for one thing.  We have had a lingering and growing fear that Dottie may actually be a rooster. This would be problematic for several reasons.  The first, and most obvious is that neither I nor my neighbors want to hear that cock-a-doodle-doo at some un-Godly hour of the morning...every morning.  Secondly, we want eggs that we can actually eat, not lots more baby chicks.  I also think it would be quite disturbing to be trying to make my fried eggs in the morning and crack the egg into the pan only to find a not fully grown little chick starting to sizzle in the heat.  Yes, disturbing on many levels.

Back to our current problem...Dottie is the biggest, she (or more likely he) is the meanest, and has the look of a rooster with the red plume on top of the head and below the beak.  Multiple people with some level of experience raising chickens have now told us that they think we have a rooster in the hen house.  So now, we have a big problem on our hands.  Dottie is going to have to go...but how? and when?  Kent is trying to figure out when her meat will be at its prime.  I have decided that I want nothing to do with the disappearance or the eating of this chicken.  Yes I eat other chicken, and yes I will eat the eggs...but I have fed Dottie since he/she was just a fluffy little thing and I just don't really think I can stomach eating him.  I know, I do not make a good farm wife.  It is what it is.

In the next few weeks to months, something will have to be decided and something will have to be done.  Dottie will likely to continue to get louder and her/his presence may prevent us from getting usable eggs from the other chickens.  At this point, we know we have a problem and we don't fully know what to do about it.  Any suggestions?