How do y'all manage to not get attached to your roosters? TELL ME YOUR SECRETS!

[BantyChooks]

I name most of my roosters, and handle them a decent amount. Some are quite friendly, though in general I don't bother to tame them down, as I find that's a rather fine line to walk with roosters when it comes to affection vs. aggression. (I have a theory on that related to sex-differentiated body language, but it's not yet fully fledged.)
I don't really have issues processing my extras. These days, I hold the view that they're pets until they're dinner, and their ultimate fate doesn't mean I can't enjoy them in the meanwhile. However, I can certainly understand that being difficult. It took me several years to get to this point, where I make decisions based on the welfare of the whole flock rather than of an individual bird.

 

[EmmaRainboe]

Lol mine is "aggressive" at night bc I touch his girls and touch him. He hates getting lived and attention but we all know he loves it at the same time haha. He loved my dad. He would always perch on his arm and hang with him but no he gets a tiny bit mean but not hurting anyone. He crows alllll day until I come out/he has to see me.

I do the same with my birds, I go see them and give them each a pet at night after they’ve settled down. Luckily my boy doesn’t mind.

 

[BantyChooks]

A rooster and a cockerel from my current flock... for your enjoyment.

 

[EmmaRainboe]

A rooster and a cockerel from my current flock... for your enjoyment.
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Aw! They are adorable!

 

[Annalyse]

I do the same with my birds, I go see them and give them each a pet at night after they’ve settled down. Luckily my boy doesn’t mind.

Lol my Roosters name is Rooster because he grew up with us calling him that he just responds now

 

[impr3]

Welllll.... we do get attached here. And it will probably seem wrong or weird to folks, but we do it because our boys are destined for the cookpot.

We had chickens when I was little and the roosters went in the stock pot. I'm hoping my emotions remember that experience enough to deal with butchering our roosters in a few months. We hatched 10 chicks last week so there's bound to be roosters but I don't know who yet (they're all mixed breeds so feather sexing doesn't work and I'm no expert at vent sexing...).

In the meantime we've concluded that the only reasonable option for us is similar to Xouie. We're handling a lot in part because we want the hens to be friendly, but also because we want the roosters to have wonderful (if short) little lives and be calm around humans so that butchering day is not stressful to them. I suspect it's going to be pretty emotionally tough for us, but I figure that's a small price to pay for a good emotional experience for the roosters.

I don't expect others to hold to the same code, but for me personally it's always been important that I be able to raise, kill, and eat my own meat if I was going to eat meat at all. Otherwise it feels like I'm sticking my head in the sand about the fact that my food was recently a living being. Plus, this way I know it was a happy living being.

 

[Sadness Child]

Simple question, How do you manage to not get attached to your roosters? I really struggle with getting to attached to my roosters, or chickens in general. I can't NOT get attached to my roos especially when I raise them from those tiny fluff balls. What about just hens in general? I currently have a struggling hen and it is causing me a lot of distress, it is making me not want to anything but cry... you know? So like how do you do it? How do you remain strong when you have to rehome a roo or have a sick hen? Still miss my five roosters I had to rehome a few months ago...

I find that not naming my chickens helps me to not get attached. I also was not very attached to both of my roosters who kept flogging me.

 

[impr3]

Forgot to add, I also don't feel rehoming them makes sense mathematically in the long run which kind of forces me to be ok with culling them. Approx 50% of hatched chicks are roosters and yet a flock which is 50% roosters would be a s*** show... Getting day olds instead of hatching still doesn't fix this, it just punts it up the line: what does the hatchery do with all the extra boys? (hint: they cull them).

I guess I could search for the perfect rehoming spot, but I'd still be worried they'd wind up in a cruddy situation. I was at the farm store today and all the chickens available for sale (30+) were roosters: packed into 1 sq ft cages, stacked in a concrete bay, and panting in the heat. Sad to think how long many of them will be sitting there as the turnover can't be high for that large of a stock of roosters (particularly when the farm store charges $10 and you can find plenty of free roosters on craigslist). At least if they go in my cookpot I can know that they had good lives right up to the end.

Of course, your mileage may vary and I don't mean to imply my own self-judgments are pointed at anyone else. My personal value system just happens to focus a lot more on quality of life than quantity of life.