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This may be a silly question, but can you not butcher a rooster? What better meat than backyard-raised? Or am I being inhumane here....lol....

The problem with roosters in backyards is the noise. Most backyard coops are only allowed to have hens as they are much quieter. My opa once had his roosters voice box removed so he could keep it. Interesting...not sure how I feel about that :)

Yeah, why not just eat it if the rooster gets too loud? And if you can't bear the thought, I'm sure there are some hungry people near by who could use some nice fresh meat...

Yes, that's what roosters are FOR. Why on earth dump them on an animal shelter (where they're only going to be put down anyway), when you can make pie? Like Zoe did here: http://crazybrave.net/2007/06/26/look-away-vegans/

I mean seriously, chicken doesn't come from plastic containers in the supermarket, and at least you know your rooster had a good life. Unlike most of the chicken in plastic.

We used to have a backyard coop. We ended up getting rid of the chickens because the birds were mean tempered and actually injured a cousin of mine. The smell and the crowing aren't all that great, either.

The few chickens that would need to be culled is still SO SMALL in terms of how many chickens are destroyed by large egg/chicken meat producers. If you're willing to respectfully care for your own chickens, you will be doing many more chickens a favor than those that would need to be removed from your flock.

I agree with EMNemastil. Baby roosters are killed en masse in modern chicken farming and not used at all. And if you can't tell the sex of your baby chick [which is hard, but something totally learnable] eat it later. I'm a vegetarian but would be willing to make a lovely homemade chicken soup for my meat eating friends.

Please don't let that organization dissuade you from chickens if it's something you've been seriously thinking about. It's like telling people not to get dogs because too many of them end up unwanted in shelters, dropped off by irresponsible people.

You can buy sexed chicks (although, there is always a chance - maybe 10% - that it'll end up a rooster) or you can purchase laying pullets (chickens under a year old but usually of laying age). If you do decide to purchase chicks, make sure you've made a plan for what happens if you end up with a rooster. As long as you plan to be a responsible chicken owner, the arguments shouldn't keep you from doing it.

The problems with roosters is that they often start crowning long before they are of good eating age. Either your neighbors or city ordinances object to the noise of roosters, which is why most people try to avoid having them even for the shortest period.

I think if you keep a small number of chickens in a good sized space, you won't have to worry about a smell issue. We have 2 chickens in a coop run space that's about 8'x15' and it's not smelly at all. We also handled them daily since they were chicks, so they're pretty friendly. One you can hold and pet, the other you can't, but neither are aggressive.

After reading their official position, it sounds like this org is advocating that "urban chickens" should be treated like pets. Even going so far as to call on a ban on slaughtering them for consumption. That's just asinine.

Short of that, the take home here seems to be "irresponsible and/or ill-prepared people are selfish and do dumb things".

Nothing new here.

Wow, so I just looked at their site in more detail, and one of their current campaigns is "Veg for life", advocating veganism. That caught my attention, so I read some more and it seems like they aren't about responsibly farming, they are about treating all animals as pets and generally advocating veganism. Which of course is their right. I can get behind their stances against factory farms, confinement, downers, etc. but they seem to be being a little underhanded in their presentation, subverting the notion of "green food" to promote another agenda. That's pretty smarmy, even if the bulk of what they are working for is good stuff. I'd take anything they say with a BIG grain of salt.

We're vegetarians and are well aware that our dairy and egg habits support the meat industry, which is why in many cases, vegetarian animal lovers catch a lot of flak from vegans.

However, I try to make conscientious choices (local food, grass-fed dairy and eggs, etc.) and I know those animals have much better, longer lives than their CAFO counterparts. We do limit how much dairy and egg products we eat but I personally feel like my children need dairy and eggs in their diets at this point in time.

A true organic, sustainably farm model needs animals working the farm. I don't know how I feel about eating the animals but I see their usefulness and it isn't merely as pets.

What a senseless thing to do. I was born and raised in a small farming community where you have to stop for ducks and chickens to cross the road and cows meander in the pasture fields all day. And nobody was just leaving their meal ticket on the side of the road. At the very least, just sell it for god's sake.

And since this article seems to go hand in hand with this topic... Factory farming was a foreign concept to me until adulthood. I just think the farther society moves away from "the small town" kind of lifestyle, the more distorted our concepts of farming become- in this case I think people just aren't realizing the amount of work that goes into raising a flock of chickens for food purposes. In a more broad sense- and I'm just generalizing here- I'd like to say I am opposed to any animal cruelty, but I find often activists on this front are pretty unrealistic. They come out with things like how sheep are freezing to death because they're being sheared. Maybe if you were to shear them in the winter, which to me would signify animal cruelty, but sheep shed all of their wool in the spring if you don't shear it.

I find animal rights activists attack everyone, including small farms that are providing really decent natural lives for the animals. Small family farms don't typically produce a lot of income either so when you start boycotting them, it's the ethical farms that can no longer afford to keep going so they have to sell the farm and the huge overpopulated farms with all the money in turn can buy the land and expand even more to accommodate the growing demand created when five small farms around them had to shut down. I'm not an expert on the subject, it's just what I've witnessed my whole life. That said, I'm not opposed to veganism. I'm just opposed to the trash talk that comes from some of these "animal cruelty campaigns." What if they were to focus more attention on actual acts of animal cruelty and not the farming industry in general?

Let me preface all this by saying I'm a veterinary student and I've thought about this a lot. I would like back yard chickens when I have the space for them. I don't think the organisation who wrote this article have the right motives in doing so-they're advocating a vegan lifestyle so of course they would point out all the possible negatives in chickenkeeping without the solutions to these problems. They want to put you off altogether rather than educate you into being a better chicken owner.

I don't really understand the argument about roosters-if you're ordering chickens from a professional company they separate the roosters from the hens whilst still in the egg so it's relatively rare to end up with a rooster. I don't really think it's so bad to post them either (although not perfect I agree-but you could always try and find a local breeder, probably get pretty breeds then too and somebody on the end of phone for advice). I know that animal welfare groups near me with give you ex-battery hens-farmers kill all battery hens after a year because they are no longer optimally productive in a commercial sense but they're fine for backyard egg production. There are plenty of welfare friendly ways of doing this, even without going down the understandable road of killing and eating your roosters should you not be ready for that.

I agree with the article that people need to think about providing appropriate care for their chickens, and that includes veterinary care. I know people don't really want to give the same level of care for a chicken they would to a pet like a dog and that's fine (for instance it was in the national news when a woman in England got her chicken's leg amputated because most people would just euthanase it), but that doesn't mean you can allow suffering. You will need to pay for the neccessary preventative treatments against worms, mites and other parasites-backyard chickens are more exposed to these in your backyard than they are in the 'sanitary' environment of the battery cage. You need to think about a possible budget for these animals before you get them-it's not necessarily the cheaper option than buying eggs (battery eggs will definitely be cheaper if your conscience allows you to buy them) so you need to ensure you will a) be providing a good life for your chickens and b) will enjoy having chickens in your backyard.

I've seen backyard chickens crawling with mites because owners won't buy anti-parasitic treatment or take the necessary preventative hygiene measures. If you don't want to pay for veterinary care then you need to kill any suffering animal to end its misery quickly. If you don't want to pay a trained professional to kill your sick chicken then you need to learn how to do it properly yourself (its not that hard once somebody shows you, and there are tools you can buy to make the job easier).

I think the main advice I would give to somebody who wanted to keep chickens would be to either go on a chickenkeeping course beforehand, or sometimes a local chicken breeder (often an experienced and knowledgable amateur rather than the factory production described in the article) will let you spend a day with them before buying their chickens and will allow you to phone them for advice. Some areas will have chicken/backyard animal societies to do with showing breeds etc and they may have meetings with lectures on care too.

I think a RESPONSIBLE backyard chicken owner will provide a brilliant life for their chickens, far better than the best chicken farm BUT the irresponsible, ignorant or laissez-faire owner (and more owners than they think fall into one of these category) can provide a worse life than the factory chicken. If you are unsure whether you can meet these needs then it's best left to a professional-the chickens may be in a small space with large numbers but the farmers know how to look after their physical welfare.

In many cases it's better/easier to find a small farm that you know treat their chickens well and make the effort to only buy eggs/meat from them than trying to do it yourself.

I feel bad about the roosters but seriously i have no clue of what i would do with them. I guess since i'm a vegetarian it doesn't really matter but it really sucks for the species. Millions are probably being killed because they are not wanted. I have 13 hens in our backyard we wanted a rooster but that would of been pushing it since we aren't allowed to have chickens in the fist place. So far we have joined the rank of the illegal backyard chicken families in our neighborhood now totally 4 families :-D also, i believe some of them actually have some roosters. I wonder how they keep from getting caught. ...

I live in Seattle and I have chickens. Roosters aren't allowed in city limits so to buy chickens you have to venture out into the surrounding areas. We don't seem to have any problems with unwanted roosters- because there aren't any. I agree with eating unwanted chickens. and if you're vegetarian, ask a friend to eat it. They are domesticated farm animals after all.

We had chickens while I was a teen. My mom went driving one day and saw a sign by a driveway advertising chickens 1 turkey for sale. The man who was selling them was elderly and couldn't take care of them anymore. Now, we lived in a small town and such things were relatively common. But I really don't see why someone who wants chickens couldn't go out for a nice weekend drive to nearby rural area and do the same. Or just go to googlemaps to find out where the nearest few co-ops are and check out the community board they have, or ask the owners if they know of anyone who'd sell you a few hens. Maybe it's a bit more work or waiting than ordering online with a few clicks, but you for sure won't get any roosters unless you want them. :)

I really hope this takes off everywhere. Seems like so many people have heard stories about decreasing egg production in hens (or maybe only seen Chicken Run ;) and think it just stops or drops dramatically. But if you're keeping hens for yourself and you have a reasonable number for the size of your family, then the drop off in eggs by individual hens won't horribly affect you. It's not that dramatic, and it doesn't spread from hen to hen - it's normal chicken biology, not a virus.