I should also mention another neat role roosters have: they mediate conflict. We got a rooster because our hens were picking on each other. That stopped once we got him. He even used to sit between the conflicting hens on the perch at night.

Also a good rooster will find food for the hens, and call them over to it. Ours used to find bugs and then make this cute "coo coo coo" and they'd come running, and eat while he watched and waited to take his turn.

sniff miss our guy. I think we'll get a new rooster in the spring, maybe a really neat looking bantam.

Oh, I definitely love having roosters! The crowing makes me happy. But our polish started mounting the most developed hens at 19 weeks, and the other two (silkies, believe it or not) wanted in on the action less than a month later. Too many roosters for the number of hens, and the girls were getting frazzled.

The thing I'm hoping for out of this "no kill" technology is the ability to buy sexed fertile eggs at the ag store. I don't have a problem culling roosters from unsexed breeds, but it would be nice to bypass raising them from chicks and guessing which ones will turn out to be keepers.

Can I ask what method you use to cull? I originally got the birds for myself and my daughter to take care of but my wife fell in love with them and she treats them like babies, which is fine, but even when we've had very sick hens killing ourselves has been off the table and we've ended up paying vets big fees to take care of it. She wants more birds in the spring but I'm not going to go along with that unless this becomes a more serious 'farmy' type situation and we become more self-sufficient with the animal care.

I grew up rural and have dispatched my share of animals hung around on my grandpa's farm during meat bird processing, so I'm not squeamish. But I need a good humane way to do this that won't upset my wife and kids.

Lately it's been the "Coyote Method".

Not deliberately, of course. Either hawks or coyotes (not sure; we're in the process of setting up cameras) have taken several of our flock. We're still figuring out what to do about it.

We've tried the broomstick method but it's hard. What works best for us is to take a traffic cone, cut off the top of it, mount it upside down, stuff the chicken in it so their head is poking out the bottom, and slit their throat with a very sharp knife. It's gruesome and if your family is squeamish it won't go well. But they go quick and drain out, so cleaning is easier.

The only predator incident we've had was the fox. We'd never even seen a fox around here before. Coyotes, yes. Foxes never. Broad daylight, while we were eating dinner, came out and found feathers everywhere. We had gotten lazy since we got the rooster, never had the roll out fencing electrified. My wife still hasn't forgiven herself.

Sorry to hear about your dude. I wish our roosters were that motivated. Even trimming his crest, our polish is practically blind so he's constantly being surprised by everything. He's useless for protection and frequently goes after our toddler. Our two silkie roosters are/were pretty timid, which is good and bad. Unfortunately our favorite (by appearance and temperment) was taken recently.

We didn't pick the roosters, we just ended up with the 3 because some of the chicks were unsexed. A well-tempered bantam would be nice.

We could fence them into a smaller area... but we like letting them roam around the property. Tough choices.

Yeah we got our rooster from a gentleman who got him from a fancy poultry breeder here in Ontario. ("Precision Plymouths"). He was a show quality bird and absolutely stunningly beautiful, but also the guy had done some "training" work with him. He was very timid with people, and not aggressive at all. And he had come from a farm where he was just one of a few roosters and just seemed pleased as punch to have a few ladies of his own without any competition :-)

Also, what's to stop us from breeding fat and delicious roosters? It's amazing what selective breeding can accomplish in a few generations, especially with marker assisted selection. Evolution has its own traits "it" has selected for in roosters, but we could easily have our own.

Fat & delicious roosters are called 'capons' - they're neutered & raised for meat, though a bit of a luxury food.

Hiding under a passing car sounds rather dangerous. Did you mean parked? :-)

The car was passing but it was this nice couple that slowed down and pulled over when they saw the fox taking bites out of our bird. Jacques took that opportunity to hide under their car. We were frantically hunting for our scattered hens when they came up the driveway asking if we were missing a bird.

We kept the poor guy going for a few weeks on antibiotics until he succumbed. Turns out foxes carry lethal bacteria in their mouths. They can bite things without finishing them off, and then come back later and find the animal again after it succumbs to infection. :-(