Converting Roosters To Roasters

I had 26 straight run chicks which had grown into 26 nearly adult bantams. That meant that approximately half of them were roosters. The coop was getting crowded (and stinky) and the roosters were beginning to fight amongst themselves and harass the hens:

The coop was so crowded at night that some of them slept on the windowsill:

So I arranged to have all but one of the roosters butchered at a nearby farm. I dropped them off and was told to come back in about an hour and a half:

When I got back, three people were working on them, turning my little roosters into personal sized roasters:

I'd only had ten and they were quite small, but this seemed to be the best solution to the problem of too many roosters:

After each bird was plucked, gutted and trimmed, they were dropped into cold water to cool down:

I wandered over to the site where they'd been prepared for the cut-up table. There was a propane fueled pot of boiling water:

And an automatic plucker, a rotating barrel with rubber fingers which removed the feathers:

When they were all done, I had ten little roasters and a bag of livers and hearts:

I took them home, bagged them and popped them in the freezer. They'll be small, but hopefully very tender. I felt good that I'd given them such a good life and they were dispatched quickly and humanely. This is a far, far better way than the huge factory farms: