New breed ‘No crow roosters’

[BDutch]

I guess I'm in the minority here, but I not only think it would be possible, I think it would be relatively easy. You can make very large changes in a breed of animal or plant pretty quickly. I just can't see people doing it because it isn't economically feasible in the short term.

Lots of people breed for fun / to earn prices at shows. Some people try to establish new breeds. For ornamental reasons, like the Sebright and Red Island Red in the past.

So why not breed a chicken that is famous for having a nice crow and good behaviour? Many people in suburban/urban neighborhoods who have chickens would love to buy such a rooster (I would).

Now I need to buy fertilised eggs from time to time. And the cockerels all need to go asa they start to crow loudly early in the morning.

 

[Folly's place]

Quieter roosters would be nice, unless the crowing is directly related to testosterone levels and fertility. If yes, we're talking about capons, or roosters with very poor secondary sex traits, and no libido.
Mary

 

[sdm111]

I guess I'm in the minority here, but I not only think it would be possible, I think it would be relatively easy. You can make very large changes in a breed of animal or plant pretty quickly. I just can't see people doing it because it isn't economically feasible in the short term.

No it's not. That would be like breeding for spleenless chickens.

 

[sdm111]

Quieter rooster would be nice, unless the crowing is directly related to testosterone levels and fertility. If yes, we're talking about capons, or roosters with very poor secondary sex traits, and no libido.
Mary

Ding, ding ding it is directly related to testosterone. Breed out testosterone you won't be breeding anything

 

[gimmie birdies]

I had a Meyers rooster sent to me who was crossbill and missing an eye. (I got credit) I kept him to see if he would crow. I never got to find out because I went on vaca, and my bird sitter didn't notice a pop door that had closed on him.

 

[raingarden]

Some breeds mate infrequently and the males are not very good at keeping the hens mated. In my limited experience, ayam cemani seems to be a good example of this. Does this mean ayam cemani have low testerone? I don't know but can tell you they are VERY frequent crowers and they have a deep baritone crow that is especially loud, despite their poor reproductive performance. I keep telling them it is false advertising, but they ignore me.

 

[BDutch]

No it's not. That would be like breeding for spleenless chickens.

I don’t think see the connection. Spleen is an internal organ? Or do you meen figurerative? Then I don’t know what you mean .

Ding, ding ding it is directly related to testosterone. Breed out testosterone you won't be breeding anything

I don’t see the connection on this one either. The crowing is a male thing. But crowing louder, more often or longer doesn't mean the rooster is a breeding champion.
And I never heard that a rooster with a softer tone , crowing just a few times a day is not capable to mate successfully.

I had a Meyers rooster sent to me who was crossbill and missing an eye. (I got credit) I kept him to see if he would crow. I never got to find out because I went on vaca, and my bird sitter didn't notice a pop door that had closed on him.

Sorry for you’re loss.

Some breeds mate infrequently and the males are not very good at keeping the hens mated. In my limited experience, ayam cemani seems to be a good example of this. Does this mean ayam cemani have low testerone? I don't know but can tell you they are VERY frequent crowers and they have a deep baritone crow that is especially loud, despite their poor reproductive performance. I keep telling them it is false advertising, but they ignore me.

So probably: loud roosters don’t perform better in reproduction.

 

[Folly's place]

My remark was more of a question: does anyone know? It would take actual research, and who would really care enough to bother? If there's interest in doing a breeding program to test this, go for it! Meanwhile, live where you can have all the crowing roosters you could ever want!
Mary

 

[eira_barbara]

So it's not necessarily true that you couldn't do this without impacting fertility or masculinity, but it is true that you'd have to work pretty hard at it and it might bring some unfortunate trade-offs alongside. Effectively, you're trying to disconnect a secondary sex trait from the cascade of sexual development cues and break the regulatory relationship between the trait and your male birds.

If I was going to try this, I'd look long and hard at Sebrights, which already exist as a breed that has accomplished a similar disconnection between "male-ness" and a common secondary sex trait in chickens (in their case, feathering). What you're trying to do is break the regulatory relationship between vocalization (well, motivation to vocalize) and sexual development in a particular direction, and that's exactly what Sebrights have achieved with hen feathering. I don't have the breed knowledge myself with Sebrights to recall how hard the hen feathering was to achieve or how aggressively the breed was originally selected, though.

 

[Chicken Heel]

So it's not necessarily true that you couldn't do this without impacting fertility or masculinity, but it is true that you'd have to work pretty hard at it and it might bring some unfortunate trade-offs alongside. Effectively, you're trying to disconnect a secondary sex trait from the cascade of sexual development cues and break the regulatory relationship between the trait and your male birds.

If I was going to try this, I'd look long and hard at Sebrights, which already exist as a breed that has accomplished a similar disconnection between "male-ness" and a common secondary sex trait in chickens (in their case, feathering). What you're trying to do is break the regulatory relationship between vocalization (well, motivation to vocalize) and sexual development in a particular direction, and that's exactly what Sebrights have achieved with hen feathering. I don't have the breed knowledge myself with Sebrights to recall how hard the hen feathering was to achieve or how aggressively the breed was originally selected, though.

I have fourteen bantam roosters, mostly OEGB but also a Dark Brahma, Barred Rock and a Dominique and each one has their own distinctive crow. I can be sitting inside the house and tell which rooster is crowing. A rooster that couldn't crow would probably be sad as hell and I would be sad for it.