Renay Robinson’s property in Townsville is a bit of a boys club.
With not a hen in sight, at any one time there can be more than 30 roosters living in her “bachelor flock”.
Ms Robinson runs a not-for-profit animal welfare group — Rooster Rescue and Rehoming NQ — in order to give unwanted birds a second chance at life.
It’s been a busy year.
“We get three, four messages a week of people notifying us of dumped roosters in bush with no food, no water,” Ms Robinson said.
Their noisy nature and restrictions by local councils means roosters routinely need to be rehomed, but Ms Robinson believes the practice of “dumping” them is becoming more common.
She believes the high price of eggs is leading to an increase in the popularity of backyard chicken flocks and means more people are buying unsexed chicks and ending up with roosters they are unable to keep.
“You don’t know when you’re buying them if you are going to get females or males, so it’s a bit of a lucky dip,” she said.
“They take them home, they raise them and out of the size little fluffy chickens they’ve brought, they’re going to find that three or four are going to be roosters.”
She said that in Townsville and the surrounding suburbs her group had rescued around 35 roosters that had been dumped in bushland, at rest stops or in parks.
Noisy by nature and hard to rehome
Ms Robinson said it was difficult to find solutions — particularly non-lethal ones — to deal with excess roosters.
She said there are few places that will take unwanted roosters, and there is limited space in her group’s “bachelor flocks”.
Ms Robinson said when her group is notified about dumped roosters it can take many days to capture them.
“Usually once we find them we set up water and food and then we try and go back there every day so they get used to us. Once we know that they’re coming for food and water then we’ll set up our trap,” she said.
They then use what she calls the “dinner and a date” method using a hen and food to lure a rooster into a crate.
“Once the hen starts clucking and making little noises the little boy comes running.”
While roosters are renowned for their fighting nature, she said it is a myth that you cannot keep multiple roosters together.
“They’re really complex beings. You might put them with a group initially and they don’t get along, so it’s about finding their little group that they are going to like,” she said.
Ms Robinson said without hens, the flock is much more harmonious.
“There’s always little blow ups but nothing where they’re injuring themselves,” she said.
“Sometimes it might just be over food, sometimes they have an order of who goes to bed first and who sits where.”
Dumping a ‘death sentence’
Y’vette Kelly fosters roosters while they try to find a permanent home for them.
She said there needed to be more awareness around what happened to unwanted roosters.
“Dumping roosters is not the answer. We need to come up with a solution as a collective,” Ms Kelly said.
“There are a lot of roosters that being born is a death sentence and not many get happy endings like we all like to think they do.”
Recently she came across a rooster that was dumped with a bowl of food.
Ms Kelly said people may believe that by dumping a rooster they were giving it a chance to survive.
“It might make them feel like they are giving them a chance and it’s not them that’s actually causing their death in the end,” she said.
She said dingoes, foxes, birds of prey and starvation are all likely to kill the birds.
“They wouldn’t know how to survive out in the bush. They’re domestic animals so it’s a horrible thing for them to starve to death and be eaten by a predator,” she said.
“I think there’s a huge gap in the humanity of how we deal with animals. A good death is just as meaningful as a good life and making sure that things are done humanely,” she said.
“We live in a very disposable world where there’s so much needless wastage.”
Give an old chook a home
Debbie King, from the RSPCA, said people who had never had backyard chicks before may not be “fully aware” of the behavioural traits of roosters.
“They will begin to crow at dawn — sometimes before — and they’ll crow through the day. Sometimes it is to signify they’re under threat, sometimes it is to show dominance,” she said.
“Sometimes neighbours don’t always feel so keen on it.”
The RSPCA estimates there are around two million non-commercial backyard and fancy breed domestic poultry in Australia.
Ms King said there are no regulations against breeders selling unsexed chicks.
“I would advise to avoid buying day old chicks that you don’t know what the sex is,” she said.
“You can actually buy chickens at point of lay.”
She said she would also encourage people to give mature chickens that may have been part of a commercial poultry operation a home.
“Maybe they are no longer laying at a rate that’s commercially viable, but it would still be perfectly acceptable for a backyard flock and would produce more than enough eggs for a household.”
Anyone interested in buying backyard chickens should do their research, Ms King said.
Great pets, protectors
Ms Robinson said despite their noisy reputation, roosters make great pets with distinct personalities and can act as protectors for established chicken flocks.
She said she would like to see more people re-home roosters if they are able to.
“When I started taking them on I was following poultry pages and people were desperately trying to rehome them and saying they’d have to kill them if they couldn’t rehome them,” she said.
“I had a bit of a soft spot and just took some on and then took some more on and realised how great they were.
“I just love them. They’re really quirky, beautiful animals,”
