Lazy Gardener
Super Self-Sufficient
Bee, the thing that holds me back from doing the task is my fear of cutting into the quick. I know.... Just do it.... What's the worst thing that could happen?
I picked up a rooster to move him to another pen a few years back and felt a huge lump on his chest. I turned him over, pushed some feathers aside and saw a dark, hard "thing" in the middle of the huge lump - thought it was a scab. I investigated it a bit and decided that the thing had to come off - kind of like lancing a boil. DH held him and I started to gently squeeze it but nothing really happened. The scab wouldn't move and at that point it really didn't seem to be a scab. I got some forceps and grabbed both sides of it and pulled. BARFOLA! It was a spur suck deep in his breast muscle and about an inch and a half long. Craziest thing I ever saw. Sure enough I looked around and saw that another roo was missing a spur. He healed up and went on to father a bunch of chicks.
Just this past summer I was out in the barnyard and heard the telltale rustle of feathers. I turned around just in time to see two roosters who I had never seen fight just take one little jab at each other. In a split second one of the roosters was on the ground dead. He had been spurred in the side of his head and died pretty much instantly.
That's why I'm not fond of spurs on roosters - not to mention the time I had blood running down my leg from a stupid rooster. I didn't bother to trim his spurs - it was quicker to lop off his head and feed him to the pigs.
Why? Not that unusual for rooster's to fight.