Chicken owners face a dilemma when hens turn out to be roosters.
CHICKEN OWNERS FACE A DILEMMA WHEN HENS TURN OUT TO BE ROOSTERS
Megan Barrett started having suspicions about the yellow chick when it was three weeks old.
While the others she’d purchased for her first flock of egg-laying hens were docile, this one was inquisitive and bold, and soon it developed a gorgeous, swooshing tail. Barrett’s three kids loved the bird, but she had a feeling local officials and maybe neighbours would not. Roosters, as the chick was destined to become, are banned in her Maryland county.
“Now that she’s a he, she’s got to go,” Barrett said, before quickly correcting herself. “He’s got to go.”
The unexpected rooster is a conundrum many backyard chicken owners confront because of a simple fact: It is nearly impossible to tell a chicken’s sex until it is weeks, even months old. Hatcheries employ professional “sexers” who make the call after scrutinizing newborns’ downy wings and nether regions, but most companies guarantee that they’ll be right only 90 per cent of the time. That means some owners who believe they bought hens end up with roosters. And problems.
The discovery can set up a clash between urban and suburban flock-keepers’ bucolic ideals — a touch of rural charm, the promise of fresh eggs — and the hard realities of local ordinances. It also can set off a hard scramble to find the rooster alternative accommodations.
Many jurisdictions and homeowners’ associations prohibit roosters because of their crowing, despite defenders’ counter-argument that the sound is no more disruptive than a dog barking. Those restrictions, unhappy neighbours and complex flock dynamics can make an unintended rooster a tough problem to solve. Animal shelters and sanctuaries, which are regularly at capacity for roosters, say the birds are often abandoned.
Laura Hall of Derwood, Md., hatched some chicks and bought two others from a petting zoo. She ended up with five roosters in a jurisdiction where only one is allowed, so she found special collars online that promised to stifle the cock-a-doodledoo-ing.
The collars performed as advertised, and the birds roamed fairly quietly on what Hall’s children call their “Happyland Farm.” Even so, animal control officers showed up in April and gruffly informed her there’d been a noise complaint. They didn’t notice Hall had excess roosters and left after she assured them she was dealing with the volume.
Then a string from one collar wound up wrapped around Rusty’s tongue, so Hall ditched the collars. Then a neighbour contacted her directly.
“I think his words were, ‘Your rooster’s a pain in the ass,’ ” she said.
Realizing she needed to give away the birds, Hall quickly posted ads on online chicken forums. Only after several offers from people who wanted to butcher the birds did she find nearby farm owners who agreed to keep them as pets.
“I never knew there would be so much drama with owning chickens. I mean, goodness me,” she said.
Rooster re-homing, as it is known, is the subject of many desperate pleas on Facebook chicken group pages and backyard poultry websites. Only a few dedicated rooster rescues exist nationwide.
“I could go on and on and tell you so many stories about roosters, and how amazing they are, and their personalities,” said Sarah Forstner, whose rural Central California rescue, Save the Cocks, once sheltered as many as 30 roosters before an injury forced her to scale back. She now considers herself more of a rooster matchmaker and adviser, linking some owners with adopters and counselling others on how to manage crowing or keep multiple roosters — something she says is possible given the right space and personalities.
But she and other advocates say the rooster shuffle reflects a dark side of the seemingly pure backyard chicken trend. Unbeknownst to many people, hatcheries typically kill male chicks the day they hatch, usually by grinding them alive, because they do not grow into egglaying hens and are not the breeds used for meat. Critics say that backyard flock owners’ demand for day-old pullets, or female chicks, leads to more cockerels, or male chicks, being culled or slipping through to eventually wind up in need of homes or dumped.
“It’s really tough, because most of the roosters out there are going to be put down,” Forstner said.
Some suppliers offer free returns for chicks that turn out to be roosters. Crystal Cahill of Great Meadows, N.J., twice took advantage of that sort of deal after buying what she was told were four 7-week-old pullets in November.
One morning in January, Cahill went out to feed her brood, and “I hear, ‘Er-er-erer-er!’ ” she recalled, doing an admirable impression of the crowing that came from the beak of a lavender Orpington she had named Mary Jane. Cahill was legally allowed to have roosters but did not want them, so she called the chicken farm where she’d bought her birds, and the owner gave her two pullets in exchange for the rooster.
A month later, Cahill’s favourite pullet Repecca, the one that followed her everywhere and sat on her lap — also began to crow. The farm owner again offered her two pullets in exchange, but Cahill couldn’t part with the bird. Instead, she took one free pullet, bought another as its companion and changed Repecca’s name to Roopecca.
“So I have gone from having four to now having seven,” said Cahill, a retired nurse. “And it was all because of roosters that were not supposed to be roosters.”
Those who want to keep their roosters but cannot risk angering the neighbours or alerting authorities might turn to a collar. The most prominent is the $17.95 No Crow collar, which Michigan resident Jim Kusmierski and his wife invented after acquiring a rooster and fearing the neighbours might not approve. It’s made of nylon and mesh — bow tie accessory optional — and it restrains crowing by preventing a rooster from filling a sac in its throat with the air it expels to call out. Kusmierski said they’ve sold more than 50,000 in about five years.
“Hide in plain sight,” the No Crow website reads. “No one will know.”