I never met a rooster I didn't like, and I've met some old, tough fellows as well as some wee ones. It's a matter of how you cook the meat you have. The li'l wee youngsters are good fried or pan-seared, the older ones need slow covered roasting to reach their best potential, and the really ornery tough old buggers are absolutely fantastic in a soup stock. Both flavor and toughness increases with age. For stock roosters, pull the meat when it's tender but still has a little texture and chop it for chicken salad, returning the bones to the stock.
I don't currently keep chickens, but I do butcher quite a lot of other people's unwanted roos, and I'm not atall choosy about what age they are when I get them. No matter what age they are, a farm raised bird will be fabulous after the right cooking. I would rather eat a 5 year old farm raised rooster than a store bought young fryer, because I can make the most amazingly flavored soup and sauce from that carcass.
Since I don't keep them I'm not the one being bugged by their noise, which is why I end up with a lot of the dumped birds I do. Young roos that have been sent off to my freezer camp because they just started crowing, fighting, bothering hens or otherwise misbehaving are beautifully tender and always welcome, though they lack the more robust flavor of the older animals. They make up for it in tenderness.
If you can put up with them long enough for them to fill out some, you'll have a better meal. Maybe pen them separately and feed them a lot more for a few weeks?
