Humane way to re-home a not-friendly rooster?

[S1969]

[QUOTE=Houndhill;7741875]
I saw estimates that ranged from $30 to $400 to castrate an adult rooster.[/QUOTE]

Probably based on whether you care if he dies or not. Personally, I’d kill and butcher a rooster before I’d allow someone to castrate it without sedation (or at least numbing). I’m not sure what it would require to do humanely, but I would either opt for that, or cut it’s throat. Much more humane, in my opinion, than digging out testicles with a knife and nothing else. Poor guys. I’m sure there are countries where it just has to be done in order to eat…but since this is not one of those situations I’d get a vet involved.

[Houndhill]

[QUOTE=S1969;7741890]
Probably based on whether you care if he dies or not. Personally, I’d kill and butcher a rooster before I’d allow someone to castrate it without sedation (or at least numbing). I’m not sure what it would require to do humanely, but I would either opt for that, or cut it’s throat. Much more humane, in my opinion, than digging out testicles with a knife and nothing else. Poor guys. I’m sure there are countries where it just has to be done in order to eat…but since this is not one of those situations I’d get a vet involved.[/QUOTE]

I couldn’t agree more!

The $30 was actually from a vet, who I would assume would not do surgery without anesthesia. Probably a chemical castration via hormone implant.

[Houndhill]

The hormone implants were done frequently years ago, but were discontinued due to concerns about human health effects. They were estrogen, there may be some reason to use progesterone, instead, but either way, I wouldn’t suggest eating birds where this was done.

[gypsymare]

Just had to deal with this over the weekend. Mom had two roosters. One was a jerk who was brutal to the hens and tore the comb and an eye out of the other rooster so DH helped me catch him and took him down the road to a nice local farmer. Problem solved.

and agreed… one doesn’t need a life plan for hatching chickens. They happen to be delicious.

[Carol_Ames]

Will please go someone please google "farm animal rescue "and see what comes up? I, too, think you, OP deserves kudos for thinking beyond the "chopping block:eek::eek::no: or in a bag throwtypos in the river which, sadly:sadsmile: most of the farmers I know would do;:no:

[Alagirl]

[QUOTE=Carol Ames;7743251]
Will please go someone please google "farm animal rescue "and see what comes up? I, too, think you, OP deserves kudos for thinking beyond the "chopping block:eek::eek::no: or in a bag throwtypos in the river which, sadly:sadsmile: most of the farmers I know would do;:no:[/QUOTE]

throw-into-the-river is rather disgusting. It’s a chicken, not a duck.

But what, in heaven’s name, is wrong with eating the chicken?
He had a good life, done in with skill, he’d have a good death. The roast is a bonus.

[poltroon]

Your farm-killed rooster almost certainly has a better life, and a better death, than anything you bought shrink-wrapped.

I can understand going the extra mile for an especially nice rooster - handsome, friendly, special breed, otherwise an asset. But, if he can’t live happily with other animals and you’re not invested enough to give him his own run, a clean death with his carcass feeding a person or animal is also a very humane and appropriate option. It beats the stress of watching them batter each other to death.

[Houndhill]

Of course there is nothing wrong with killing and eating a problematic rooster (at least, in my book).

But, if you visit these chicken forums, or know anybody that has “pet” chickens, they don’t think about them this way. They are pets! They are apalled at the thought of eating them!

Our dogs and horses may be thought of as pets to us, where others regard them in different ways. I think we need to respect the different ways people think about animals.

[S1969]

[QUOTE=Alagirl;7743402]
throw-into-the-river is rather disgusting. It’s a chicken, not a duck.

But what, in heaven’s name, is wrong with eating the chicken?
He had a good life, done in with skill, he’d have a good death. The roast is a bonus.[/QUOTE]

Not to mention, most of the farmers I know wouldn’t waste an animal if they could eat it by throwing it in the river. Certainly not something that was “normally” eaten (e.g. versus something like a rats nest of babies).

Agreed - if done right, it’s not a terrible thing.

But if one doesn’t want to eat it, it’s totally fine to humanely euthanize it just like any other pet. Throwing in the river - never ok.

[Alagirl]

[QUOTE=Houndhill;7743676]
I think we need to respect the different ways people think about animals.[/QUOTE]

Goes both ways though. I don’t really take kindly being called ‘primitive’ for being a meat eater.

[Houndhill]

[QUOTE=Alagirl;7743727]
Goes both ways though. I don’t really take kindly being called ‘primitive’ for being a meat eater.[/QUOTE]

That is understandable.

[Ghazzu]

[QUOTE=Houndhill;7741887]
Just to add, husband did castration of ring doves under anesthesia! He tells me he was asked to castrate an adult rooster By a colleague in the Netherlands, where he did his post-doc, since he was so good at castrating ring doves, but it did not end well. Actually he thinks it was an African Jumgle Fowl, the ancestor of our domestic chickens.

Adult roosters seem to be not that easy to surgically castrate, according to what I have read. Their testicles are very large, particularly during the breeding season, which I have read you should avoid when castrating. If you take the testes out between the ribs, they have difficulty fitting when they are very large, evidently that is what my husband encountered.[/QUOTE]

I’d think it would be pretty damn difficult to perform any surgery from that approach, considering the position of the lungs and posterior air sacs relative to the rib cage.

[saultgirl]

@Houndhill;7743676

But, if you visit these chicken forums, or know anybody that has “pet” chickens, they don’t think about them this way. They are pets! They are apalled at the thought of eating them!

Some. Not “anybody” with pet chickens. Not everyone on the chicken forums. Some.

Some also put diapers on the chickens and let them run around in the house. Some don’t bother with the diapers, and just follow them around in the house with paper towels and a spray bottle. NOT KIDDING. So yeah, some may very well be appalled at the thought of eating them, however I don’t think that encompasses even the majority of chicken owners.

[trailpal]

When I was a teen, we “made capons”. (I was going to become a vet, and my parents encouraged me.)

Capons are castrated cockerels , but the way I learned to do it, you work with chicks who are not fully feathered out - you do it at about 6-7 weeks of age, when the down is just turning into feathers. We went in between the last two ribs, and gently lifted the teste into the instrument, closed the instrument which then severed and sealed the cut. (Have to repeat on the other side.) I used automatically cauterizing instruments. The tricky thing with the teste is that it is right against a major artery, so you had to be precise and not touch the artery. I learned that if you don’t do them that young, the male hormones kick in and they get adult rooster behavior and muscle development, plus as the previous poster mentioned, the testes are too big to remove properly.

It so happens that this is also the right age to make “fryers” so if you did slip and kill one, you could dress it out for supper. I am happy to say that all but one of the first cockerels I caponized survived to become nice big fluffy capons. Capons grow to be large, and are pretty docile and get along with each other and hens. They will also raise chicks. And they are good meat birds.

[LovelyBay]

I had 13 roosters this year. … Mr. LB tried a few different solutions, and honestly a hatchet was the easiest one. …sad but true

[gypsymare]

There was an episode on one of those shows where a girl wanted to become Amish, so she was visiting a farm. They had a 2’ piece of rebar. Put a foot on one end and a foot on the other with the bar across the chickens neck and pulled the body away. It was quick. I hadn’t seen that method before.

[RedmondDressage]

[QUOTE=LovelyBay;7747223]
I had 13 roosters this year. … Mr. LB tried a few different solutions, and honestly a hatchet was the easiest one. …sad but true[/QUOTE]

We found the same thing… Tried a few different methods. Fastest and easiest for SO is by far the old fashioned hatchet and a stump for a chopping block. Sometimes the old school way is the best way!

As for chickens being pets… I think they can be both. I have 2 large hens that I’d never eat - love those ladies. I also would never eat my Silkies - way too darn cute. Everyone else? Meh, I’m ambivalent about them. I don’t feel bad about the ones we eat and I don’t worry much over the ones that disappear. I think when you have enough of them and for long enough you get pretty used to death in one form or another.

[cowboymom]

I’m exactly the same way, I have some chickens that I love dearly and they pay for it with their freedom; they’re locked up snugly in bomb shelter-like coops and runs. Others are random hatchlings or rescues or generic hens/roosters and they live free ranging it, happy as a chicken can be until they get picked off by an eagle or random fox. Rare, since I have a guard dog, but he hasn’t figured out to LOOK UP yet.

I’ve been buying corn on the cob for my last batch of hatchlings… they’re so sweet and cute. But quite a few of them are roosters and will end up in the freezer before winter arrives. After having a short, happy, perfect chicken life.

I don’t have patience for a mean rooster, at all. The one mean one we had was a Barred Rock that attacked my daughter when she was 3. Within the hour he was boiling away in a pot of chicken and dumplings and she ate him with gusto! :lol: All my roosters are kind and good, heritage breeds, but in this day of sorted chicks arriving in the mail hardly anyone needs or wants a rooster, even a good one.