Hmm, well, sometimes all it takes is a rat running over his feet and that can set a rooster into crowing at night. If he's a bit of a highly strung individual, that's more common. I've had hens do the equivalent, just repeating the egg song/alarm call (sounds identical as I'm sure you know) during the night because something startled them.
I've trained mine so they shut up when I tell them to, which always helps, but in getting there I did cull against excessively anxious animals and those that wouldn't train, so it's not a bandaid solution but one which takes time and could be harder for a purebred breeder. I like my mongrels, makes a lot of things easier when you don't have rare genetics or show type to consider amongst your culling vs keeping criteria.
Some people deal with this using anti-crow collars, some actually build soundproofed coops, some put the roosters in night boxes... Some roosters won't crow if they can't lift their heads just right, but some will crow no matter what. I had one that would stretch his neck under his body and crow into his own butt, just about, if you prevented him from lifting it to crow.
It's not true that they cannot crow if they can't stretch their necks out, I've seen many crow with 'S' bent necks (in the resting position), it's just that they prefer to crow with neck outstretched to get the best acoustics and range. I've tried so many methods with night crowers, now I just cull, it's not worth the sleep deprivation torture, lol. But, your experience may be more successful, never know till you try.
One thing that works well is if you have a hillside that faces nobody close by; natural hillsides and land contours can be very effective in channeling sound away, they can almost mute it, especially if the coop sides are solid and preferably insulated in the directions facing the neighbors or yourself. You can deaden the sound by at least half. Planting clumping bamboo can help, but I don't know if that works where you are, I don't know what country or region you live in. It's good info to add because many questions' answers depend on regional specifics. If bamboo won't grow where you are, other dense species of plants can help instead but may take a long time to grow so may be better bought at a good size, which can get expensive. A wall of stacked bales of hay can work well. Even constructing buildings or walls in the way can help. Putting a wall in front of the door or main open area of the roosting area could possibly help, depending on your cage style.
Some people use sunken pits, even, just build a little cage underground, which can mute things very effectively. If you're able to, and can't retrain or stop him with other methods, it may be worth digging him out a little cellar, lol... On the plus side, if it gets very hot or very cold where you are, that will act as a temperature controlled room for them, if you get all the flock to get used to going in there to roost at night. Probably not feasible given that you have multiple roosters and it sounds like purebreds at that, so you don't want to be mixing them I assume.
But many of those methods involve you putting the rooster in a new sleeping location every night which can be stressful for both of you.
Unfortunately it's not the easiest issue to fix, nightcrowing.
Some people use automated sprinklers that go off if sufficient noise is made, but that could obviously be a respiratory risk or even freezing risk depending on your ambient temperatures.
Some vets will do decrowing operations, there's a vet or two on this forum that do them, but it's a few hundred dollars and of course no guarantees your rooster survives it, birds are touchy with anesthetics and pain relief. Anyway, some info if it helps:
Quote:
That link's a general review of the threads on this forum about people trying to decrow roosters, someone even posted a video on how to do it at home. :/
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/705084/decrowing-roosters
That one's a thread by a vet who does the decrowing operation; he has a few threads on this site including recent ones so you know he's still active here.
Hope it works out for you. This is one issue that's hard to deal with and always a shame to cull a rooster for a fault like this one, but nobody seems to have a surefire method to fix this once it starts. Once you've lost enough sleep or have the neighbors bringing down the authorities on you though there's not a lot of options or time to experiment.
Best wishes.
