Longtime local journalist Bill Radford and his wife, Margaret, live on 5 acres in the Falcon area with chickens, rabbits, dogs, cats, a flock of parakeets, goats and two horses. Contact Bill at billradford3@gmail.com.
Roosters cry foul
Fowl sexism
By Bill Radford
One down, two to go.
We have an excess supply of roosters, but we’re whittling the number down. We posted photos of our three newest roosters on Facebook, looking for homes for them. That’s not an unusual strategy; I see Facebook posts pretty much every day from people looking to rehome a rooster. But we seem to have an advantage in that our roosters are partly a rare breed: indio gigante, a breed of large chickens that began in Brazil. As a result, we actually have more people interested in the roosters than we have roosters; it’s just a matter of coordinating schedules for the roosters to get picked up. One, however, has already gone off to his new home.
Before that one was adopted, we had five roosters, With an accompanying 15 hens, that meant one rooster for each three hens. Many sources say the best ratio is one rooster to 10 hens; others are more lenient. Too many roosters in a flock can lead to fighting; an excess number is also tough on the hens, who can get stressed out by what I will politely call too much romantic attention from the roosters. Getting rid of the three new roosters — hatched from eggs last summer — will leave us with our original rooster and his son, who we call Junior.
That’s one of the risks from letting eggs hatch; you don’t know if you’re getting hens or roosters. And sexing of chicks doesn’t appear to be an exact science, so people buying chicks can end up with unwanted roosters; that’s particularly a problem if you have a backyard flock in Colorado Springs and many other cities where roosters are outlawed.
The plight of such roosters is one reason Rooster Sanctuary at Danzig’s Roost (roostersanctuary.org) is not a fan of those backyard flocks — and certainly not of commercial operations, where male chicks may be tossed into a grinder shortly after being hatched. The sanctuary used to take in backyard roosters but with strict rules; those giving up their roosters, for example, had to also relinquish their whole flock. Now the sanctuary focuses solely on game roosters rescued from suspected cockfighting.
“We remain a vegan sanctuary and do not support any form of animal use,” Jewell Johnson, founder of the sanctuary east of Denver, said in an email. “When we receive calls from people with backyard chickens that want to place a rooster with us, we try to give tips on rehoming. Most of these people have grown fond of their little rooster and don’t want any harm to come to him. The rules around chicken keeping are significantly flawed. Feed stores and hatcheries sell to anyone, no matter where they live. There are no rules on who can buy chicks that have a high probability of being male, even when these people live in cities that forbid roosters. So the chicks are legal until they’re obviously boys, then they automatically become illegal. It’s a setup for trouble. In the end, the rooster is the one who pays.”
While Danzig’s Roost no longer takes unwanted backyard roosters, you can have them join the Rooster Gentlemen’s Club at Serenity Sprouts, a small family farm in Strasburg. also east of Denver. (Their slogan: “If you’ve got a roo and don’t know what to do, we are here for you.”)
They won’t take just any “roo,” though. A rooster in the Gentlemen’s Club must be in perfect health so as to not endanger the other roosters. Also, “We have toddler grandchildren that love to hang out with the roosters, so roosters non-aggressive towards humans is required as well,” according to an email from the farm.
A “small, one-time intake fee” is required to enroll your rooster in the Gentlemen’s Club. Families at the time of intake can decide whether the rooster is “pet only” status or can be humanely harvested and used for food.
“We intake some truly amazing roosters that deeply touch family’s hearts and some families opt to ensure that their boy remains as a pet only option,” as explained in the email. “This means that they will spend their natural life on our farm unless they are adopted.” (Go to serenitysprouts.com/gentlemen-club for more information.)
While too many roosters is a problem when there are hens to fight over, it’s not an issue at the Rooster Gentlemen’s Club. “Since there are not any ladies in the bachelor run to fight over, the boys do not feel the need to ‘protect’ their hens and often integrate well once passing our various quarantine stages,” according to the farm’s email. “By removing them from their flock, they lose their pecking order and typically fall in line with the new leaders of the bachelor flock. “
Which leads to the option we would have gone to if we hadn’t found people eager to take our roosters: establishing our own bachelor quarters for most of the roosters. It would have entailed taking one of our unused chicken coops to elsewhere on the property — ideally a site where the roosters couldn’t see, and thus yearn for, the hens.
Backyardpoultry.iamcountryside.com has some tips for setting up a bachelor pad for roosters: “The roosters will need an adequately sized chicken run and pen so that they don’t feel crowded. Even as a bachelor colony, although there are no hens to fight over, roosters can still become territorial about their home. It’s important to have multiple feeders and waterers so that the roosters at the top of the pecking order allow the lower pecking order roosters to have access to food and water.”
