Hi,
My mother's family is made up mostly of farmers and ranchers. Everyone goes in for mixed farming, and chickens have been part of our history for hundreds of years. In fact our family name is a variation of the Polish word for "rooster". Chickens, and particularly roosters, are therefore necessary. My grandparents were the head of the family and organized all chicken activities. In the beginning, chickens were mostly allowed to do what they wanted as long as they produced eggs and didn't get killed or make a nuisance of themselves. Then one day a rooster abused the privilege and ruined it for everyone.
My cousin K. is a year younger than me. Like all farm kids she played outside a lot. One day when she was about three, she was innocently playing by herself. There were adults in the immediate area. She wasn't anywhere near the hens or the henhouse, nor was she paying any particular attention to the birds. One of the Leghorn roosters (who'd always been a handful to begin with, but never a major danger) decided to stalk and attack her. He had no reason to do this. My cousin was not near the hens, or even looking in their direction. Still the rooster attacked from above and went for the eyes.
Luckily my cousin's three-year-old reflexes were good enough to save her vision, but it was a very close call. She fought the rooster off long enough for an adult to come in, grab the rooster, and save her. But she was scarred for life in more ways than one. Her scalp was nearly torn off and she had deep cuts especially around her eyes. She doesn't remember the attack, but anything with feathers wigs her out. Also, she's reluctant to go outside and has become a generally fearful, aggressive, violent, and unbalanced person. Being the victim of random, unpredictable violence messes with a person.
I heard the story second-hand much later, so I don't know whether the rooster was killed on the spot or later that day. Nor do I know whether he was considered worthy of being made into soup, or whether someone just snapped his neck and fed him to the nearest hog. Either way... no great loss.
Sometime after that, all branches of the family started building poultry yards. It was too late for my cousin, who thirty years later is still dealing with some of the psychological consequences.
If there were a moral to this story it would be: the hand may be quicker than the eye, but the beak and spurs are WAY faster than the hand. Not one of the adults present was fast enough to prevent the rooster from attacking and doing a lot of damage once he'd decided to go after the little girl.
To prevent an animal attack, especially from an animal with a faster biology, you must be between the animal and the target at all times. Human reflexes just aren't fast enough because we operate at mammal-speed courtesy of our mammal biology and we don't think that quickly either. Chickens (and all birds) operate at something closer to reptile-speed. Insect-speed is the fastest of all. A person thinks cats are fast until they try sparring with birds or reptiles, at which point he realizes that there's a lot of variation within a species but that some phyla and families have different neuro-muscular structures. There are tradeoffs that go with having a central nervous system and being warm-blooded.
There are things a person can do to get faster, and to get better at predicting what another person or an animal is going to do next, but our biology places some hard limits on how quickly we can see something, activate a reflex, and get the message out to our muscles. Realistically, when you deal with animals who move and think faster then you do, it's all about being in the right place at the right time with enough physical strength and/or firepower to get your way. Birds are faster than us physically, and sometimes mentally as well depending on the bird and the person. That leaves firepower, which isn't always practical in an urban setting. If there are shots fired or a neighbor sees you kicking a rooster across the pen or smacking him with a broom to get him to stop attacking, you're going to get some official attention and it won't be from the welcome wagon.
There's no good way to win a fight with a smaller animal, because from a distance, bird and cat attacks on humans look funny enough to be put on YouTube. Nobody likes a bully, and beating up a much smaller animal just to assert dominance doesn't play well among people who don't understand the psychology of the smaller animals. Even when we win, we lose.
I don't have to worry about defending myself, but if I had children, or if I let the cats out, I would not keep roosters. It's just not worth the risk.
Squeaky
(whose pullets were delayed a week due to the hurricane! 2 meezers, 2 tenants, 4 pullets t - 5 and re-counting...)
