Wendyl Nissen: Off with Winston's head!

Wendyl Nissen. Photo / Paul Estcourt

In the end it wasn't very difficult at all. I simply went out to lunch, drank a few glasses of very good champagne and did it. I climbed the fence and grabbed Winston and Peachy, two of the seven chicks who had hatched three months ago, and sent them to their death.

They were roosters. And as it turns out I don't much care for roosters. They are cocky, dominant, demanding, aggressive little bullies. And that morning, at 5.30am on a Sunday, they had woken the neighbourhood.

"What on earth is that?" I mumbled to my husband, half asleep. I had just heard what sounded like a baby being strangled. It was by no means a rooster crow. More a "cacacabopwhew".

"Looks like we have some roosters," he said all cool, calm and wide awake as he often is at 5.30am. He's a senior riser and most days I roll over to find him lying in bed, wide awake, staring at me.

"I knew it," I said, leaping out of bed to witness the pathetic crowing attempts for myself.

Winston, the white one, was standing on his tippy toes, his head in the air and screaming "cacacabopwhew" just like his namesake Winston Peters. Behind him Peachy would chime in a sad little "cawhew." Peachy was more a Chris Carter kind of guy.

There really had been no mistaking the two roosters among our new chicks. From very early on they displayed signs of male domination.

First ones at the feed bowl pecking away at the other hens, attacking each other regularly and leading complicated escape missions over and under fencing into my vege patch.

I returned from holiday recently to find my entire spring garden, which was ready to feed the family over summer, completely barren.

I had grown every plant from seed, I had lovingly prepared the soil, and it represented months of hard work and planning.

I hated them.

"Those roosters epitomise everything I detest about the male species," I announced to the family, before adding: "All species, human, bird et cetera."

"Get rid of the lot," said my 12-year-old daughter who, after three years of chasing hens out of our gardens, had had enough.

"They're just chickens and none of them is laying eggs, so what's the point?"

She was right. Matilda hadn't laid an egg for weeks and the others were still too young.

"Just wait, we'll be over-run with eggs in a few months, you'll see."

She silently tapped something into her Facebook page I felt sure involved the words "Mum," "barking" and "mad."

I decided to kill the roosters and received a demonstration from the Topp Twins involving a metal bar and swinging a chicken by its feet.

Jools and Lynda made it look so easy, but then they were in the middle of an interview with me and had found themselves dragooned into teaching me how to kill a chicken.

I guess it was in their interests to move it along so they could get back to their real lives where journalists don't swerve off topic.

I found a metal bar. I was ready.

But on Crowing Sunday I just couldn't do it. Instead I bundled Winston and Peachy into a cardboard box and drove them to my brother's place.

"You should starve them for six hours if you're going to eat them," I said as I ran down his path and leapt back into my car.

He didn't. Half an hour later they were dinner.

"The most amazing meat," my brother raved down the phone. "Better than any organic chicken I have ever bought. Tender and tasty, I even ate the liver and giblets - so sweet."

I felt a little queasy.

"And the fat was yellow, not that white globby stuff you find on chickens today."

I changed the subject.

And then I went to sit with my six remaining chickens.

Matilda - my tame hen who thinks she is a cat - and her offspring the Kardashian sisters, Kim, Khloe and Kourtney who are gorgeous gold-laced creatures. Mummy, the white hen, named by our grand-daughter after her favourite person in the world, and Matilda Junior who looks just like her Mum.

A strange calm had come over them.

They were having a communal dustbath and what looked like a good gossip. I'm sure the same feeling descends on tribal cultures when the men go off to hunt for a couple of weeks.

I interrupted for a moment: "Now about those eggs."