Roosters get abandoned in the forest or left by the roadside, if they’re not dumped on some unsuspecting farmer. However, Patrice Jones, co-founder of VINE Sanctuary in Springfield, wants people to know there’s a better way to deal with roosters.
Every year, hundreds of roosters die because there is no room for them at sanctuaries. The Rooster Project will start saving lives immediately by helping sanctuaries welcome more roosters. The Rooster Project's educational efforts will save lives into the future by both increasing the expertise of sanctuaries and reducing the number of homeless roosters facing euthanasia due to stereotyping, cockfighting, and backyard hen-keeping. A leader in rooster rescue, VINE is ready to go but we need you!
The place where roosters get rehabilitated
By GLYNIS HART reporter@eagletimes.com Sep 22, 2018 0
The kiss
Patrice Jones of the VINE Sanctuary in Springfield with Domino, an alpaca. The alpacas are clipped to suit their comfort level with the clippers.
GLYNIS HART
SPRINGFIELD, Vt. — If you go to Vermont Craigslist and type in “free roosters,” there are at least eight listings. “Scarlett” (oops) and “Spike” live in Bellows Falls, where their morning crowing “has gotten to be a little bit of a problem in our sleepy town,” according to the ad. In Danville, “one salmon Faverolle rooster and one Wyandotte rooster, hatched this spring and both very sweet, healthy” are looking for a home, and someone in Duxbury has five Leghorn roosters to give away. In Milton someone got a surprise: “Some of our new laying hens are roosters! So come and get them. Two for free. It’s what’s for dinner!”
It’s not just the crowing that gets roosters in trouble, but they can be aggressive, attacking other roosters and human beings. Although retail chicken dealers like Tractor Supply sex their chicks before selling them, it’s not uncommon for new chicken owners to find what they thought was a hen has grown into something else.
Roosters get abandoned in the forest or left by the roadside, if they’re not dumped on some unsuspecting farmer. However, Patrice Jones, co-founder of VINE Sanctuary in Springfield, wants people to know there’s a better way to deal with roosters.
The Rooster Project, the sanctuary’s new initiative, aims to reduce rooster homelessness and other unhappy fates. But by pushing back against the stereotypes of roosters, and teaching people how to properly socialize their chickens, VINE Sanctuary hopes to intervene at the roots of the problem.
“We can’t just keep expanding,” said Jones.
The sanctuary considers one rooster, Viktor Frankl, to be a co-founder. In 2000, Miriam and Patrice Jones found a chicken in a ditch, where it had jumped or fallen from a truck bound for the slaughterhouse. They adopted the chicken and became fond of her.
“And then she started crowing,” wrote Jones in a recent VINE newsletter. “I noticed that this led me to feel differently about my beloved bird friend, because all of the stereotypes about roosters were getting in the way.”
However, the next adoptees were two very young chickens, “so young they were still peeping.” The rooster they’d named Viktor Frankl stepped up to be a caregiver, although he didn’t always know what he was doing; when the chicks had to be taken indoors for medical reasons, Viktor moped outside for two days, refusing to eat. “He defied the stereotype of roosters as aggressors,” wrote Jones.
Figuring they were onto something, the women adopted more birds. They became a chicken sanctuary, adopted other animals, and around 10 years ago moved to Springfield.
Nowadays, the farm sanctuary includes chickens, doves, parrots, three dogs, a group of elderly cats, sheep, alpacas, goats, a potbelly pig, an 22-year-old ox named Scotty, 38 cows, ducks and geese and occasional guests, such as the Canada geese grazing on the hillside.
The roosters keep coming, including roosters rescued from cockfighting operations, which are illegal in all 50 states. However, on sanctuary land you won’t meet any roosters leaping at you with their spurs out, or fighting with one another.
The sanctuary re-educates roosters. According to Jones, chickens are forest creatures. Left to themselves, the flocks spread out with the roosters on the edge. Roosters protect the flock from predators and communicate to one another by crowing – it’s not really about waking people up, but about announcing to one another what’s going on with the flock.
To illustrate her point, she gestures to three young roosters bred for cockfighting, who came to the sanctuary this season. The three red, gold and black roosters run together down the fenceline, ducking around a shelter and ignoring the older chickens and the hens – rather like three teenage boys looking for something to get into. They’re best buddies, says Patrice.
Another rooster has come to the sanctuary battle-scarred and bloody-minded: he’s in a cage in the middle of the flock, where he can see the other chickens. “We can’t teach them how to be a chicken,” said Jones. “They can only learn that from other chickens.”
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This rooster, who’s never actually been around other chickens except in a fighting situation, where he may also have been fed testosterone and amphetamines, may need weeks or months of watching other chickens to learn chicken manners. Once he’s ready, he’ll be allowed out with the flock “under supervision” by sanctuary staff.
What about that rooster aggression? Well, if a rooster goes to attack another chicken or a person, he gets time-out.
“Take a medium-sized bird cage and pull the bottom out, the tray out,” said Jones. “Then you’ve got a cage with a handle. You can drop it down on him and he’s in lockdown. It starts a process of behavioral modification. If you’re consistent about it, it won’t be long before he stops attacking.”
Chickens also need room, so when roosters get in a kerfuffle, if they can they’ll resolve it by one rooster quitting the field. “They need more space than people think,” said Jones.
Judging from the peaceable kingdom of the sanctuary, where the animals seem to wander around minding their own important business, she knows what she’s talking about.
Through The Rooster Project, money will be raised to teach other sanctuaries how to rehab and reeducate roosters, so they in turn can re-educate chicken owners.
“Every single day, sanctuaries have to turn away roosters because there’s no room for them,” said Jones. “It’s emotionally exhausting for sanctuaries and literally lethal for roosters. We need to solve the problem, we are ready to start, and we have the expertise and experience to know what needs to be done.”
To get involved with the Rooster Project, contact VINE Sanctuary online.
Does anyone have a good rooster recipe, I want to make sure I have one in place before I reply to the Craigslist ads. Maybe we can get them high like they do the lobsters in Maine before we enjoy the flavor of Rooster Stew.
ReplyDeleteRoger: What a really sarcastic, unnecessary response. We are lucky to have the VINE Sanctuary in Springfield. If you took the time to read about VINE, you'd know it's a great group doing very good work in which they believe. And since they are vegan, your comment is offensive to them.
ReplyDeleteVegan diet is offensive to me, so then the entire article is offensive. Freedom of choice, but meat and vegetable eaters came first.
ReplyDeleteOK, then. Let me rephrase: What a really sarcastic, unnecessary response. We are lucky to have the VINE Sanctuary in Springfield. If you took the time to read about VINE, you'd know it's a great group doing very good work in which they believe.
DeleteMaybe go to Shaw's or any regular grocery store, the chicken is sold in the a similar cooler space as the veggies I like them both. And we both have our opinions.
DeleteRoger is a narrow minded fool. He will defend Trump to his grave. It is clear as day he was bullied as a kid, so now he likes to bully others from his Anonymous posts. It's fair to say Roger is not forward thinker. Redneck comes to mind.
ReplyDeleteSo ANONYMOUS pops up again as a Blogger Troll, changing the subject to the only thing he or she knows is to bash Trump when the subject has nothing to do with Trump speaking of narrow minded and bully!
ReplyDeleteBy ridiculing VINE, you are the troll.
DeleteRoger, DO NOT FEED THE TROLL!
ReplyDeleteVine is such a great place ? go up on the hill across town from them and see how they destroyed the hill side by having it clear cut,what about all the wildlife that used to live there,now they have nothing,just to save a few chickens
ReplyDelete@ 7:58, I grew up hiking and hunting that ridgeline. Had great respect for the generous land owners and unspoiled hemlock forested, hill top ledges. Now, it's a posted, clear cut, rutted, muddy, eroded, eye score. Nothing lives or ventures there. For reference, look West off White's hill on Summer Street towards Craigue Hill. Tells you all you need to know about their motivations.
DeleteHate to say it (well, no I don't) but there is such a thing as property rights here in America. What always amazes me is how when a corporation pillages the landscape, the Right in this country staunchly defends it. When private citizens do what they wish with their own property, and it's not "conservative" enough, the howling begins. I'm more concerned with the blight that we all have to look at; the dive rentals that encircle downtown, and the garbage-strewn, weed-choked private residences. The Vine Sanctuary is out of plain sight for most people, and I'm sure it's reasonably sanitary, which is more than I can say for some of the "Redneck Sanctuaries" around town!
DeleteRE: "I'm sure it's reasonably sanitary,......."
ReplyDeleteAs usual, boviating about something you know little or nothing about. Just may want to check out the wood shavings and manure dump in the brook gully. But what the hell, that's property rights in your book.
I'd rather have wood shavings and a little chicken crap than old cars, piles of tires, washing machines, etc., not to mention the chemical sludge seeping from old factories and toxic waste sites. Are there trees growing out of the leaky roofs there? I doubt it. You people on the right need to clean up your own act before you condemn anyone else!
DeleteWhere did Right and left or Conservative and Liberal come into play. I consider myself a Independent leaning to the Conservative side, and I don't like to look at any of that stuff and would call the chicken crap just as bad to look at. People should keep their property fairly managed and looking respectful just out of human and earth decency no Politics involved in that.
DeleteRoger, it isn't very hard to see the political undertones (and overtones) in everything you, and your kind, have to say. It all comes from the same far-right place. No one in their right mind gets "offended" by someone else eating only vegetables, or using their own property to save abandoned roosters. A lot of people in my neighborhood have chickens, or are vegans, and neither one bothers me. It's nice that you maintain your property, as most of us do. But to claim, as conservatives tend to do, that the blighted properties around here are the result of "liberalism" flies in the face of reality. When there's a Confederate flag in the window of a decrepit property, or a Trump sign in a weed-choked yard, (as I've personally seen) I doubt the occupants are Lefties! Having met some of them, unfortunately, confirms this!
DeleteWhat a warped interpretation to what I had written. Nothing that I wrote has a political undertone, and to say "your kind" could be spun as discriminatory.
ReplyDeleteI think I'll go have some chicken and veggies for dinner tonight, because I'm all inclusive.
Roger, right now I'm laughing hysterically. You really are a funny guy!
DeleteNo, that was not funny. Roger has jested this "joke" every time VINES gets press. He enjoys bullying those he does not agree with. He is literally a small, tiny, little man.
Delete6:41, I wasn't laughing with him, I was laughing at him. Sort of like the world laughing at Trump's ludicrous claims this morning at the U.N.! Sorry for the confusion.
DeleteYou mean the jerk president with little hands like roger?
Delete