In Defense Of The Rooster
- Thomas Nelson
- August 10, 2022
- Animals, Sustainable Living
- 0 Comments
Today, I split a zucchini squash in half and put it in the chicken pen in my backyard. This time of year, I wind up with more zucchini than I can use or my neighbors want. And so I take my excess and feed it to my chickens as a little snack. At the time, everyone was in the coop. My rooster, who we named Horse, was the first to see the treat.
The fact that he was the first to see it isn’t a surprise. Roosters are vigilant. They spend about 66% less time scratching and pecking the ground than hens do, instead opting to survey the surrounding area for threats.
Horse walked over to the squash and took a bite. He then began letting out this low cluck that I admittedly have never heard him make. Within seconds, all of the hens came running to him. He found a delicious snack and could have monopolized it. Instead, he told his flock about it. Not just that, but the rooster began taking chunks of squash and dropping them in front of some of the younger chickens in the yard.
I’ve long known that a rooster can be useful to a flock. He helps to maintain order, preventing hens from bullying one another and will attack threats to the flock, helping to keep the hens safe – at his own expense. But this display clued me into a side of the rooster that is seldom seen.
Maybe it’s my duty today to help soften the public opinion of roosters like my buddy Horse.
The maligned rooster
The public perception of the maligned rooster is poor. Stories of “cockfighting,” rooster attacks, complaints about crowing, and the fact that just about every major city and town bans roosters have pushed these animals to the fringes. And then there’s the mass culling of male chicks in the egg industry.
Does the rooster really deserve all the hate? Maybe roosters aren’t the barnyard villains we make them out to be. Maybe all the rooster hate is a symptom of America’s disinterest in its own food system.
A disconnect between us and our food
According to the MSU Food Literacy and Engagement Poll taken in March 2022, 49% of Americans never or rarely seek out any information about where their food is grown or how it was produced. Data from Statista points to a society that sees food production as something someone else will take care of in some other place.
In 1940, the average farmer was responsible for feeding about 19 people. As of 2016, that number has jumped to 164. Americans have pushed their food further away, increasingly opting for well-manicured neighborhoods free of the “ugliness” of self-sufficiency. Even in some cities that have recently begun allowing backyard hens, new efforts are being made to further restrict them.
Even in cities and towns that allow chickens, very few permit roosters. Most cite their noise as the issue. I’ve lived in both the city and the country, and to be quite honest, the rooster sounds I hear in my neighborhood pale in comparison to the auditory assault of normal city things, like revving motorcycles and passing trains. And even those things didn’t bother me that much. It’s just sounds. We live in a sound-filled world.
Can we stop hating the rooster?
This article has turned into more of an opinion piece than I intended for it to be. I was inspired by Horse, my rooster, to at least try to begin a discussion on the maligned rooster, possibly America’s most disliked farm animal. There’s no fact or figure or statistic I can present to you that will change how you feel about roosters. Maybe the key here is just hanging out with a rooster like my boy Horse. Failing that, maybe I should just ask.
Are roosters really that bad? Are they really that disruptive? My normal-density block has at least 5. The only consequence of these roosters is a small amount of background noise, and really only during select times of day. They don’t disturb our sleep, probably because we’re all used to them. But if we can get used to them, so can you.
Maybe if we can soften public opinion about roosters, we can begin to see them as good animals and pets that have value and don’t deserve to be culled or pushed away.
