I have to say, I think the prejudice against the term "rooster" is terribly snobby. "Rooster" has been around forever. All my egg customers refer to the boys as "roosters". The general public knows male chickens are roosters. Roosters are the ones that crow in the morning and make all the noise. Only serious breeders refer to the older males as cock birds (as I've learned.) In my opinion, we aren't doing ourselves any favours by cramming that distinction down the newbies' throat.
Hmmm....this isn't actually true, though. Rooster, actually hasn't been around forever as a term. "Cock" is the term, derived from the French
coq and has been the term for hundreds of years. It is steeped in poultry culture that literally predates English as a language. Rooster is a relatively new term that has never been part of the poultryman's vocabulary. That's OK; it's just the history of language, especially the language of poultry breeding, the jargon of the specialization.
It is not "snobby" for a domain to have a jargon; all domains do, whether we're discussing poultry breeding, micro-biology, theology, or literary criticism. Domains develop jargon in order to express in the most succinct way possible exact meaning. The relatively new term "rooster", as was pointed out, expresses only gender whereas the correct terms, "cock" and "cockerel", express specifics about gender as well as age, and it is actually the specifics of age that are so frequently important when discussing the bird in question. It is, however, common for neophytes to undervalue the jargon of a field they wish to join, but that has more to do with their inexperience than with the value of the jargon. As they become more steeped in the culture they naturally end up adopting the proper terms of the field in order to communicate most clearly.
It's not at all a problem, or point of shame, to have to learn the various terms; indeed, it's part of a healthy initiation. I certainly had to learn. It was not snobbish of my mentors to teach me. I am not a snob for passing it along and schooling newcomers in the correct way to talk about chickens.
Food for thought, lots of people raise chickens, relatively few people raise good chickens. The same could be said about the elements of so many fields. The trick is not debasing the masters who do things well; the trick is in becoming a master. Adopting proper jargon is also part of adopting the correct mentality to become a master. Although there are exceptions to all rules, as a whole, be it in this field or any other specialization, the very best tend to exhibit a firm mastery of content knowledge, language, and practice--the building blocks of a field. Generally, one becomes a master by submitting to the building blocks of the field, not by attempting to topple them to suit one's own pace.
Please do not misread this as a veiled way of my expressing offense at the use of correct poultry breeding jargon being called "snobbish", as I stated above, it's perfectly normal, if inaccurate strictly speaking. Just keep filing away the proper terms and start putting them to use. It's simply the learning of a language.
However, I do need to address certain allusions to "other" spaces where harsh criticism of the term "roo" is encountered, and, for the life of me, I don't remember it occurring here. Still, where I have encountered it, it has been exceedingly inappropriate. On one space, in particular, with which I am familiar, the culprits are actually just silly with rather pronounced Napoleon complexes. I'm actually not exaggerating, I know one of the culprits well enough and he's all hot air, naught but. Moreover, some of the rudest folks who jump on the incorrect use of jargon don't actually breed anything and are not known for their strong breeding practices. The sad or, rather, difficult thing is that the neophytes don't actually know this and falsely ascribe to them more authority than they deserve. Then again, some of them are actually good breeders; they just lack social skills.
At no point, though, does this devalue the jargon or render it obsolete or ineffectual. It just means that some people are rude, we thicken our skin, or laugh them off for being twits, and then continue on learning the discipline of the specialty--its knowledge, language, and practice.
Best,
YHF
