Monday, June 13, 2011

How to stay alive as a rooster

First of all, you need to crow at the appropriate time, which is sunrise or a little later.  In the summer this can be 5:30 or so, but at no season is midnight to 3 am a good time to crow loudly and persistantly as if trying to encourage the sun out of bed early, especially in the summer when people have windows open.    Floyd here passed that test, and he survived the round of rooster butchering and soup making the first year we had the chickens.   We didn't actually know them apart by their crowing habits, but after getting rid of most of the roosters there was a lot less midnight crowing so we were happy.

The second key to survival is to know your limits as an edible bird.   Some of our remaining roosters suffered from an excess of machismo and would attempt to fight with Kip through the fence.    This did not come out well for them as Kip knows exactly how edible chickens are and doesn't take guff from a mere rooster, fence or not.   Floyd passed this test, and I have never seen him act aggressively, except toward the male ducks when they harass the female ducks.  He's definitely a peacekeeper, and a survivor. 

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