Poultry Farm Resources

Poultry Vets are Few & Far Between, Chances are you'll need to become your own surgeon, not just vet giving shots ... surgeon, preforming actual surgeries . . . both for you and your roosters, and any one else who dares get close to a roosters will sharpened spurs.

Keep in mind roosters are very dangerous & violent birds, they will attack all strangers who enter your farm, from snakes to rats to dogs to humans. There is a reason why they call them "fighter cocks". These fierce fearless birds will fight any thing and every thing that moves. They are known to frequently hospitalize children, gouge out the eyes of dogs, and slaughter snakes attempting to eat eggs. You as their "new" handler will be subjected to countless pecking order tests, involving your hands, feet, face, and ankles being stabbed, kicked, clawed, pecked, and beaten with strong wings. A fighter cock will endear itself to it's handler/owner/trainer and will NOT switch owners without a fight. They are loyal to one, and only one, and that is the flock leader. Every flock as one leader, and every rooster tries to be that leader. If you want to be successful in raising and rescuing roosters, you must establish yourself as flock leader, and don't back down or run when the rooster makes a flying leap at your head, otherwise the roosters will constantly attack you.

Once you start rescueing roosters, know that you will never again have a vacation or a day off and you very likely will have to quit your regular day job just to have enough time to care for the roosters. Unlike a backyard flock of hens which will peacefully take care of themselves, a large flock consisting primarily of roosters is a handful. You will be daily breaking up fights, and mending wounds, at least until every rooster in the flock has gotten used to every other rooster in the flock. And you will have to go through the fights all over again, each time a new rooster joins the flock.

Know what you are getting into BEFORE you start!

If you want to rescue roosters, know that one rooster on a farm is nothing like one hundred roosters on a farm. If you have more than one rooster, you will have cock fights, as roosters are highly territorial creatures. Each rooster will pick a couple of hens, and defend them to the death. A rooster's spurs can grow to 8 inches in length and are razor sharp, you will either need to learn to file down the spurs or learn to stitch open wounds.

In their wild jungles of Asia, the rooster is considered one of the most dangerous of all animals, domestication has not done much to calm their temperaments.

This is NOT a career for the inexperienced or the squeamish. I highly recommend you work several years with a calmer breeds such as Cochins, before making an attempt to raise the high strung and temperamental fighter cock breeds.

You may very will end up with multiple small barns and out buildings as it is often necessary to separate the more violent roosters from the rest of the flock in order to prevent them from killing off all the other roosters in the flock. Know too, that chickens are naturally cannibalistic, and if one bird starts bleeding the whole flock both hens and roosters will turn on the wounded bird and eat it alive. If the wounded bird is not removed immediately to the sick house it will be dead in a matter of minutes. Think of chickens as feathers piranha, because that is exactly how they act.

In my 30 years of rooster (and feral cat) rescuing, I've had to deal with a lot of ferocious animals whom no one in their right mind would get near. In that time, I have discovered that one thing, and only one thing, works to calm every animal or bird, no matter how mean, terrified, or angry. I call it "Hug Therapy".

I learned the hard way, the dangers of roosters, and ended up requiring plastic surgery on my face to undo the damage caused by the spurs of one tiny little hot tempered rooster. I was 16 years old at the time. My dad, upon returning home from the hospital, was ready to kill the offending rooster. Freebie (so named because he had been given to us for free, when we brought home a new flock of hens one summer) was still on the war path and quite ready to attack again. By this point, I had spent 4 years rescuing roosters from our egg farm and hiding them in the wood shed. My small flock of rescued roosters had already topped 50 birds, and I wasn't about to let any of them get killed just because they had some sort of genetic emotional problem that made them think they had to dominate every one n the farm.

Upon arriving home from the hospital, instead of going to bed like the doctors had ordered, I rushed back to the barn, blanket in hand, and threw it over Freebie, scooped him up before he had a chance to protest, and ran back home with him. (No small feat, considering the barns were a full acre away from the house!) I spent the rest of the day in the rocking chair with my tightly swaddled rooster, who though he tried to protest, had his wings and feet swaddled so that he could not move and could do nothing but cluck in protest. In the days that followed, I was seen walking around the yard with my face in bandages and a bundled blanket under my arm. A month later I had my stitches out, my bandages removed, and a pet rooster that was a calm as a baby chick. And thus began my "Hug Therapy" routine.

Today, many years, 30 feral cats, one wild horse, one snap dog, and 500 roosters later, Hug Therapy has become the secret to my success with taming and calming the fiercest of all animals. The idea behind it is simple: animals attack because they are afraid of being hurt. They attack, to defend themselves before you can get a chance to hurt them. They attack before they give you a chance to prove that you are not going to hurt them. They don't wait to find out if you are a threat or not. In their minds you are human, therefor you are the enemy. Hug therapy, prevents them from hurting you, by immobilizing them, but it dose so in a warm comforting "embryo in womb/egg" sort of way, which results in their feeling safe and protected, which in turn soothes them, relaxes them, and allows them the chance to realize that you are not a threat.

For most, hug therapy works in a few weeks. Some however, usually cats, will take longer.

Initially, I used this to keep the roosters from attacking me, but I discovered over the years that it can also be used to stop them from attacking each other. Once a flock has established it's pecking order, fights between the cocks will be rare and few. However, every spring, you can expect to see a few fights start up as roosters start showing off to the hens. These fights can vary from mild pecking and feather fluffing, to all out wars that end in blind, mutilated, or dead roosters. After years of raising roosters, I can tell when a pair is just showing off to the hens, or if they are intending to fight to the death. The show off fights can be left on their own, as neither rooster is intent on hurting the other. However, the bloody fights must be stopped quickly. It is vital that you step in a stop these before either rooster gets hurt. This is where Hug Therapy takes on a new level: Swaddle both rooster -- to each other, and hug them both.

A fully swaddled rooster will have only his neck and head exposed. Like this the two rooster can continue their "fight", but now, all they can do is pull out each others neck feathers, which, after a couple of hours, gets rather boring and they are ready to find something else to do. Without the use of their wings or legs, they can not hurt each other. Upon unwinding the blanket, both roosters will run off, beat his wings, crow, and head off the find hens to dance around. Should they instead, start fighting again, simply wrap them up again, and hold them for a few hours more.

As you can see Hug Therapy requires a lot of patience on your part, as you are going to be spending 6 or 7 hours a day (or more) for days on end, doing nothing, but hugging the animal. Like I said before, you can't rescue roosters and hold down a regular day job as well, you just won't have time to do both.