So today was the first available day at the butcher for our roosters.  These birds were the result of unplanned pregnancies by our hens hiding their nests in our hay loft last fall.  The resulting roosters have been treated well with us providing them with food, water and safe shelter.  But they have been terrorizing our other birds, having vigorous sex with our hens and beating up our other roosters.  See what they did to our Columbian Wyandotte rooster above.

So because this is an unplanned event, we do not have our usual secure bird spot available as there are chicks still in it.  So the night before last we caught the roosters and put them in a pen in the feed shed which has always contained birds well in the past.  The next morning they had all jumped the 8 foot netting and had trashed our feed shed.  So we caught them again and moved them to the pheasant pen which has been reliable in the past in containing our poultry.  Two had escaped by later that morning and by last night they were all out.  We caught three of them yesterday and put them in a rabbit hutch and kennel.  This morning we caught three more but put them in a large kennel.  They slammed their bodied into the door repeatedly until they broke out again.  We managed to catch two of them and put them in a different kennel keeping the door pressing against a wall so it could not be opened.  We were having trouble catching the last escaped rooster.  But he is relatively small and less aggressive than the other so we decided to give him a reprieve.  Here he is, still nervous about all the commotion.

And here is one of the caught roosters, getting ready for dinner.  He became Chicken Teriyaki from a recipe from Joy of Honey by Doris Mech, a cookbook given to me by my father ~20 years ago.

He was good.