Country Living – Cock-a-doodle-do

By Julie CottonI am busting to tell everybody about the “other” male in my life. Hahaha…no guys, nothing that juicy and exciting, it’s just my rooster. Now I have always had my girls (hens) as there is nothing better than fresh free-range eggs. But I obtained my rooster about three years ago purely for the “cock-a-doodle-do” factor. I am a chronic early riser and so is my rooster, he starts his wake-up call around 4.45am and that suits me just perfectly (although he also crows in the middle of the day and all other hours of which I have always found quite odd!) So anyway, for a very long time, along chugged the most perfect relationship between an early rising housewife and her cockerel.

Now I am going to run the risk of sounding completely naive and daft here, but the thought that roosters did anything other than crow never really crossed my mind (I must have thought baby chickens just dropped out of the sky or something!). That was until that fateful day when I was out in my veggie garden raking leaves when I witnessed what surely would be described as a criminal offense in any civilised society. Hearing an awful ruckus in the chook yard I looked up to view my rooster violently trying to (how can I say this in a “G” rated format?) copulate with one of my girls. Feathers were flying along with deafening cackles and his razor sharp talons in full view. So incensed at his terrible behaviour I flew into the chook yard, rake in hand, adorned with oversized gumboots, and chased that little bugger within an inch of my life! Over the slippery grass and into the adjoining paddock I went, must have looked completely ridiculous and it was an epic fail of a mission anyway.

So I slept on his behaviour that night and woke up thinking I had the perfect solution to his wicked copulating ways. I rang the vets in Wellsford the next day so excited about my steely resolve and asked ‘is it possible to de-sex a rooster without losing his ability to crow?’ Funnily enough there was a lengthy, polite and awkward silence on the end of the phone followed by a short ‘no, not really Mrs Cotton!’ ‘Dammit’ it, I thought, there goes that brilliant idea.

So now I keep a very watchful eye on my rooster. I mean, I sympathise with my girls. I wouldn’t want him flapping and carrying on all over me either. I don’t want to be mean, but he just didn’t cut it in the looks department! He is very overweight, has many feathers missing, a chunk out of his red thingy on top of his head, big warts and growths all over his feet and his toenails need clipping!So my rooster stays and so does my plastic rake at the front of the chook run. Why do I keep him you ask? Well I keep that ‘master of the harem, the boss of the chicken boudoir’ primarily because, without him, in a power outage I will have no alarm clock and if I was to be honest, he amuses me ever so slightly!