Keeping a rooster alone?

[griswell]

My neighbor up the road wants a rooster. He wants to be able to hear it crow in the morning, and for it to be a pet. He says he only wants one chicken, and that'd be the rooster.

I have always heard chickens are social animals, and they don't do well alone. Is that true with grown males? Would his lone roo be happy by himself, save the company of his owners?

 

[LivinNewDreamInND]

My husband brought home a 1 year old black star rooster that is much larger than the rest of my flock that is 4 months old, so I decided to keep him in the barn alone. I think that he was very lonely he would crow non stop at the slightest sound of my other birds... Then I decided to put my two adult turkeys in the barn with him and he is like a new bird! He is much less skittish and does not crow 1/4 as much as he used too. I think he actually thinks he is a turkey now, he follows my hen around all of the time.

Probably not what you want to hear, but that is my humble experience with a lonely rooster.

 

[Mahonri]

where is Phenix?

I'd give you a Blue Wheaten Ameraucana roo if you were in Phoenix.

 

[Yazzo]

Unless he's planning on spending a LOT of time with the rooster, he should get at least two. The rooster just won't be happy by himself for long, even if he seems fine at first.

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

I think the little guy would get depressed.

 

[Sylverfly]

The fist year I had chickens I ended up with a huge aggressive white rooster. He was mean to my hens so I threw him out of the coop. He spent all his time dancing and crowing outside the fence until he coaxed a few of the leghorns out (they are the airheads of the chicken world). As soon as he’d coaxed enough hens out he’d take off with them and be gone for days with them, needless to say a few hens never came back but the stupid rooster always did when he ran out of hens. Lesson of the story roosters or any chicken for that matter do not like to be alone and will be problematic when kept isolated from a flock (in my experience anyway).