Animals

The Rescuing of Roosters--Even the "Fighters"

by Stephanie Ernst

categories: Sanctuaries, Animal Rights

Published May 26, 2009 @ 11:23AM PT

Eastern Shore Sanctuary caption: "Former fighters roosting together in the trees on a misty morning"

A rooster who has been trained to fight can't be rehabilitated, right? Oh so wrong. Some of you may recall that a few months ago, during a disussion regarding the rehabilitation of pit bulls, I linked to a (heartbreaking) post that Deb Durant wrote this winter about some rescued fighting roosters--and to her later post that mentioned how well they were doing at Eastern Shore Sanctuary.

Now over at SuperWeed today, pattrice jones has written about Eastern Shore's experiences with rescuing (and rehabbing) roosters over the years--and about changes afoot for the sanctuary (changes that involve, among other things, relocation to another state).

Snippet:

[One set of roosters] came from cockfighting busts, cruelty cases, and one “4H experiment gone horribly wrong.”

Nobody else would take them. Back then, many farmed animal sanctuaries strictly limited the number of roosters they accepted and none would take former fighting roosters. Some operated under the (false) assumption that roosters cannot live together in harmony and would accept only one rooster at a time no matter how many hens were there to balance the gender scales.

Since we took in escaped “broiler” chickens from local poultry operations, accepting any bird who found his or her way to us, regardless of sex, we’d already learned that roosters can and do flock together sociably, as of course their wild relatives must. . . .

They arrived in a rattle-trap collection of cages crowded into a battered pick-up truck. I’ll never forget the reaction of the hens — red and white egg factory refugees who had never seen a rooster other than the big white “broiler” roosters at the sanctuary — as we let the roosters out into the yards in turn, each seeming more colorful than the last. Red roosters with black markings, yellow roosters with brown markings, black roosters with iridescent green tail feathers. Striped roosters! Spotted roosters! Tropically multicolored roosters! One group of red hens stood in a row along a fence, their beaks literally gaping open in surprise.

And everybody got along fabulously.

Read all of pattrice's post for more, including more on the rehabbing of fighters, more on how the handling of rescued roosters has been changing in recent years, and more about the sanctuary's upcoming move--and how you might be able to help. Please also see the Rooster Rehab section of the sanctuary's site.

Eastern Shore Sanctuary and its founders do important, admirable, necessary work. Please support them.