It’s interesting that, considering I’m a humor writer who’d never planned on having a pet other than occasionally trying to keep alive the random animals my kids find while digging in the yard, the one type of animal that I seem to have long-term is chickens.
It’s not hard to raise chickens. They take up way less space than, say, cows, and they’re much easier to lift, you can keep them outside in the winter because they’re literally made of feathers, they’re super cute as babies, and then when they’re older and kind of goofy looking, they contribute. And when you get sick of them, there’s another Erev Yom Kippur use that we will not talk about here.
The rooster has some jobs too, but it’s not clear what those are.
Yes, among our chickens, we have a rooster named Henshe, who we named before we knew he was a rooster.
We didn’t want a rooster. When you get a new chick, you don’t know what gender it is, and then it grows up and you find out. It’s like those toys that come in an egg! Wait.
Another use of chickens is that, according to researchers, chickens are very calming animals. More so, my own studies have found, when they’re living outside and are no longer in your living room. But I have to say, owning roosters is NOT relaxing.
First of all, they’re always crowing.
And yes, I knew about crowing. I was taught in yeshiva that roosters crow at sunrise. What I was not taught is that roosters actually crow all day. Randomly. Henshe could crow every 10 seconds for an hour straight, or sometimes, if he doesn’t feel like crowing, he can go a good 20 minutes without.
And no, it’s not the seforim that are wrong. I think my rebbeim were misinformed. Let’s put it this way: Perek Shira talks about what pesukim all the various animals are saying when they make noise. And for most species, the male and the female say the same pesukim. But when you look under chickens, there are separate pesukim for males and females: The hen says the passuk of “Nosein lechem l’chal basar,” which is very appropriate, whereas the rooster says SEVEN PARAGRAPHS. The rooster has the longest shira in the whole sefer, because he doesn’t stop.
Based on my observations, our rooster crows to communicate one or more of the following announcements to the hens, both of whom could still hear him if he used his indoor voice:
- “It’s morning.”
- “There’s a predator nearby.”
- “Hey, predator! There are chickens over here!”
- “My owner has a migraine.”
- “It’s raining.”
- “It’s still raining.”
He loves making noise on rainy days. I think he’s saying, “The sun’s about to come out… It’s about to come out again… It will come out this time for sure, I can feel it.”
Sometimes when he’s crowing, I wonder what the other chickens are thinking. Are they thinking, “Yeah! That’s our MAN!” Or are they thinking, “Uch, again with the crowing? I’m right here!”
I thought he’s supposed to crow at dawn. That’s what my rebbeim said. My rebbeim said that we thank Hashem for creating in roosters the ability to distinguish between day and night. But yeah, they don’t have that. At least mine doesn’t. He definitely starts crowing while it’s still dark. I’ve heard him in the fives.
Turns out, his job isn’t actually to tell you that the sun has come up, because you can figure that out by yourself. Unless you’re asleep. His job is to tell you that it’s going to, eventually. He senses that dawn will break soon, so he starts crowing. That’s why farmers use it to wake them up. Farmers don’t want to wake up with the sun and burn daylight. They need an hour to stumble around and get dressed in the dark first, without waking their wives, much.
Also, for the most part he doesn’t really wake you if your windows are closed. You need to keep him inside, on your nightstand. Since Henshe has started crowing, we’ve only gotten complaints from one neighbor. That said, I definitely look forward to finding out the hard way which neighbors sleep in their sukkahs.
So we had to buy this rooster collar, which is a little velcro choker that limits the volume of noise that can come out of the larynx, though not by a lot. But we put on the collar, and our neighbor stopped complaining. Next time we’re going to try it on the rooster.
The thing is that he’s never going to stop completely, because he thinks he’s crowing to protect his flock. I’m not sure how his logic gets from point A to point B, but there’s no arguing with him while he’s crowing. I’ve tried.
He also has other protective noises. For example, he makes this loud, surprised gasping noise when he thinks anyone’s in danger. Like let’s say I pick up one of the other chickens, he makes his gasping noise. So mostly, he adds drama.
So as far as protection, he’s redundant, and sometimes he’s wrong. He doesn’t really protect them; he thinks he protects them. I protect them! Well, I don’t really protect them; Hashem protects them.
The rooster’s other job is to find food. And then make a bucking noise over and over to alert the others to this food.
“Here’s the food! Here’s the food!”
I know. I put out the food. And everyone else saw me do it.
He has no idea where this food comes from. It just appears, shortly after I walk by him with a paper plate.
He’s also the hardest to herd. If he senses that you want him to go in a certain direction with the group, such as back into the coop for the night, he’ll go in another direction, in case it’s a trap. And then you have to keep the coop door open while you go chase him, and then everyone gets out.
And if you pick up someone else, and they in any way seem uncomfortable about it, he’ll attack you. I think. Granted, it’s not a very effective attack. He jumps and brushes up against you. And he’s mostly feathers. It’s like a pillow fight. But still.
So I looked into what to do about this, and what experts recommend is that you should walk around for several minutes every once in a while with the rooster under your arm, both to show him who’s boss and to embarrass him. Like you do with a baby.
But it’s not just feathers he’s attacking with. It’s also his claws, which is basically a scary way of saying that he’s swiping at you with his toenails. Muddy toenails that definitely stepped in something. So the other thing I have to do with him is trim his toenails every once in a while, just in case. He’s the only one who gets his nails did. That’s the other way I emasculate him. I have to sit down with him and file down his toenails, all the while thinking, “Am I supposed to do every other nail? Is this the wrong day of the week?” I always forget to ask until I’ve already caught him.
The truth is that with any kind of livestock, the male is going to be the pain. Like cows seem to be a pretty easy pet, other than maybe the difficulty of holding them under your arm, and also you need bigger paper towels. But then you have a bull. Sheep seem pretty easy – I think they pretty much do what you want them to – but then you have a ram. And all of them think it’s their job to protect their family from those who come into their enclosure that you built, but that’s mostly you. Their job is to protect the flock from you.
Speaking of which, the other thing about roosters is that you can’t have more than one rooster for every six hens, because the rooster is like, “I barely do anything besides gasp and get carried around and have pedicures; I definitely don’t want competition.”
They can’t all buck at the food.
So if you have more than one, they fight. In fact, when we first got Henshe, he was fighting with both of our hens. I think he thought they were roosters. None of us knew what anyone was. In fact, we thought he was a hen too, so we were wondering what was up with this new chicken.
So yeah, we still call him Henshe, mostly to annoy him. He is not amused.
The thing is, though, that we may have another rooster coming. One of our hens hatched two eggs this summer, and while we’re not sure what genders the babies are, one of them, Faigy, is starting to look like a rooster.
(We are great at this.)
We were kind of hoping they’d both be girls. We assumed that most baby chicks are girls. They’re not. I looked it up. You know what percent are males? 55 percent. Talk about a shidduch crisis. How are you supposed to have one rooster for every six hens?
I think a lot of people are murdering their roosters.
So apparently, you have a choice: You can either not have any roosters, or you have to keep giving away roosters every year to people who are equipped to deal with them. We got Henshe from my son’s friend’s petting zoo. They might take him back, but that doesn’t mean they want to take back however many boys we hatch going forward. How many boys do they want?
There’s always kaparos. I’ll be the weirdo who brings my own every year!
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia, a monthly humor columnist, and has written six books, all published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
