Too many cocks....

We are going to have to perform a cockerel cull. There are eight cockerels to ten hens and the situation has reached reached crisis point.
They are all "homegrown" as it were and therein lies the problem. I was present at their hatching, and watched in awe as they emerged from their shells in a chorus of cheeping; eight fluffy yellow easter chicks, peeping out from the vast warm plumage of their proud bantam mummy.
New chicks are notoriously hard to sex, but within 8 weeks we had deduced that we had 2 hens and eight cocks. Eight! We gazed gloomily at them.
"The Law Of Sod stikes again." Jasper said morosely.
"Look on the bright side. We've got 2 lovely hens." i chirped, with nauseating Polly Anna optimism. Jasper grunted and walked off.
The next day i discovered the 2 hens had dropped dead behind a plantpot. Perhaps they had a dreadful prescience of what was to come and decided to quit whilst ahead. As i sadly disposed of their lifeless bodies in the slurry lagoon, i wondered why nature was so illogical and cruel. I understood the premise behind survival of the fittest, but eight cockerels was phenomonally unfortuneate.
I watched them digging in the back garden for worms. The thought of striding outside, rounding them up, and strangling them, seemed utterly monstrous and filled me with horror. I told myself that they would be fine together. They looked perfectly happy from where i was standing, and after all they were brothers! (I can now appreciate just how delusional those rose tinted spectacles made me....)
I went to a poultry fair and bought 10 bantam hens to redress the balance, and for a while, they all rubbed along together quite happily. Until the hormones kicked in...

12 months later my naive optimism had returned to haunt me. My kitchen window has become a viewing panel for the scenes of violent debauchery that take place daily in the back garden. It is like being a unwilling spectator in the poultry version of a snuff movie. Their wary suspicion of each other has stealthily developed into a burning hatred, which manifests in increasingly ferocious displays of machoism, as they indulge their pathological desire to reign supreme. I had fondly pictured them wandering amiably around the farmyard together like something out of band of Brothers. It is with great sadness that i realise that the pervading atmosphere of murderous intent and brooding antipathy is more reminiscent of a cross between West Side Story and Jeremy Kyle.
Their black eyes glint malevolently as they circle each other like boxers. They crouch down in clumps of grass and ambush each other triggering terrible fights and squawked promises of retribution. They constantly goad one another, jeering, insulting, delivering (and perpetrating) threats of violence.
They ignore my shouted pleas to "STOP FIGHTING AT ONCE!" I have to physically separate them with a broom, whereupon they skulk off together to resume the battle out of sight, like a pair of unruly schoolboys sent home in disgrace, only to begin brawling again outside the school gates.
Occasionally, they will call an uneasy truce, and the whole mob will strut off together to partake in a spot of gang rape. I watch, transfixed with revulsion as they single out a hen, surround her and take turns on her, pinning her down with their wings and egging each other on with a raucous cacophony of clucking and crowing. When they have finished, there is an awkward silence during which they ruffle their feathers and avoid eye contact, before swaggering off in different directions.
The hens are permanently braced for the next onslaught. They wander about the farm yard looking slightly stunned - like an advertisement for Battered Wives Anonymous.
The swiss chalet hen house, once so charmingly kitsch, squats in the tussocky grass like a symbol of violent repression. The cockerels skulk in its shadows waiting for an opportunity to pounce, like ASBO youths loitering in the stairwell of a tower block.
Something has to be done. I take a deep breath and make the phone call.