09/03/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1FUppuZUWr/?mibextid=wwXIfr
We get emails and calls all day long. They go like this:
“I bought chicks for eggs, unfortunately one is a rooster and our city doesn’t allow us to have roosters”
I hear something else.
“Unfortunately, I bought chicks knowing I live somewhere that prohibits roosters. I wanted the females for their eggs, and I was apparently comfortable with the male chicks being somebody else’s problem. But this one survived, turned out to be male, and now that his existence is inconvenient for me, I’m blaming zoning and asking a sanctuary to take responsibility for the life I chose to purchase.”
Roosters are not an unfortunate byproduct of zoning. They are the predictable result of producing hens for eggs. Every hen has brothers. Whether those males are killed at the hatchery, discarded later, dumped, surrendered to shelters, or taken to sanctuaries at four months old, somebody pays the price for the demand for eggs.
While I realize not everyone takes the time to reach out to a sanctuary, and many roosters are instead dumped somewhere or surrendered to shelters where they will be killed free of charge, receiving these emails and phone calls all day long pushes me to say this all out loud today.
Roosters are not accidents. Roughly half of chicks are male. That is a biological fact everyone involved seems perfectly comfortable ignoring. People buy chicks because they want hens and eggs, cities allow hens while prohibiting roosters, and when the inevitable male grows up and crows, suddenly his existence is a problem that someone else is expected to solve. Permitting for backyard hens doesn’t include any information on this fact. The system is designed to screw you, the roosters and small charities like ours.
And we are expected to pick up the slack for a system we did not create. Not even the large, well-funded animal organizations in most cases. It falls on small sanctuaries and independent rescuers to take the calls, build the housing, buy the feed, pay the vet bills and care for these unwanted birds for the rest of their lives.
I appreciate that someone who contacts us is at least trying to find a safe place instead of dumping the bird or taking him somewhere to be killed. But that doesn’t make this system any less absurd.
You cannot build laws and entire backyard-chicken cultures around keeping females while pretending males are an unforeseen inconvenience. If your system only works because somebody else kills, dumps, or financially supports the half you don’t want, your system doesn’t work.
And don’t get me started on using this same absurd system to “rescue” roosters from suspected cockfighting…..
