'We didn’t want anything to happen to him’
Abandoned rooster enjoying its new home
Heather and Rob Creemer of North Alton did a double-take when they noticed what they thought was a chicken bobbing its head and scratching around their front lawn on a rainy July afternoon last year.
According to Heather, the chicken turned out to be a rooster they named Henry.
“It was pouring rain and he just showed up on the lawn. We gave him a cob of corn and he never left,” Creemer said. “He turned into a friend of the family.”
Henry also became a popular topic of conversation in the neighbourhood.
“People who visited would say, ‘Do you know you have a chicken on your lawn?’” Creemer said.
The family concluded Henry was abandoned after asking neighbours if anyone in the area was missing poultry from their flock.
“He had lots of fans who would come and see him every day and people would drop off cobs of corn for him,” Creemer said.
Henry slept in a flowerbed under an overhang because Heather wasn’t comfortable with him as a house guest. But when the family gathered in the evening on lawn chairs in their yard to listen to country music on a radio in their shed, Henry would take his place beside their son Connor and seemed to enjoy the company.
“If you opened the door in the morning and called for Henry, he would come running to the door to see what we had for him to eat,” Creemer said of the corn, peanuts, birdseed and popcorn he dined on every day.
But as the evening air got cooler in September, the family began to worry how the coming winter weather would affect Henry.
“They must all freeze to death in the winter unless you have a proper place for them,” Creemer said.
“He was a sweetheart of a rooster. We didn’t want anything to happen to him.”
The Creemers decided Henry needed a permanent home and contacted the North Mountain Animal Sanctuary in Berwick, which eventually became Henry’s permanent home.
“He is such a happy little rooster where he is,” Heather said.
HOME SWEET HOME
Things certainly are looking up for Henry since his arrival at the sanctuary. He shares the title of Cock of the Walk with four other roosters named Rusty, Desmond, Clive and Ollie. Each of the roosters has its own enclosure shared with a couple of hens. Henry has access to an enclosed outdoor area to protect from predatory birds and a ramp to a tree house to roost in on summer
evenings. He enjoys foraging for bugs and is fed a healthy chicken scratch diet.
Amanda Dainow is the president and co-founder of the North Mountain Animal Sanctuary, which took in its first rescue animal in 2011. The sanctuary is home to about 50 rescued animals, including rabbits, pigs, goats, sheep, chickens and turkeys.
Dainow is pleased Henry is healthy and adjusting well to his new home.
“He has iridescent and shiny bluish black feathers and a nice red comb that means he is healthy,” Dainow said of Henry. “He is a very relaxed rooster. He likes to hang out in his tree house.”
But Dainow says many more roosters do not fare as well as Henry after they are abandoned or “dumped” in the wild by their owners.
“Every year people buy chicks or eggs to hatch because they want hens for eggs. Some of the eggs or chicks are male and become roosters. And people
are dumping them because they don’t want to deal with them. They just want the hens for the eggs,” Dainow said.
“People find they are a nuisance. So, they either kill them and eat them or they dump them. But the dumping is a real issue because they are domestic animals and they don’t survive well in the wild.”
Dainow said abandoned roosters are in danger from birds of prey such as eagles and hawks and raccoons, weasels and even domestic dogs and cats. They can also be hit by a car, freeze in winter, overheat in summer, and dehydrate.
Dainow frequently receives calls from people who have discovered a rooster wandering in the woods as far away as HRM and the South Shore.
BEING PREPARED
Dainow said if people plan to purchase chicks, they should keep them all or consider adopting hens from animal sanctuaries.
“We want to try to prevent this problem to prevent the dumping of animals,” Dainow said.
Lynn Curwin of Truro is a volunteer with animal welfare organizations. Curwin worked with other volunteers to place a rooster and a hen at North Mountain. She said both would likely have been slaughtered.
“To me it is definitely worth the effort because I know this rooster has a good life now,” Curwin said. “I see the updates on Facebook how he is doing, and it makes me feel good that I was able to help him.”
Tamara Ciric Cox of Halifax helped volunteers capture an abandoned rooster running loose in Bedford.
“We captured him after someone just left him in the woods by himself,” she said.
She also took another rooster into her home for several months after the owners wanted to get rid of it. Oliver now shares the crowing responsibilities with Henry at North Mountain Animal Sanctuary.
“We spent 10 months with the rooster. He wanted to cuddle at night. They have personalities and intelligence like cats or dogs,” Ciric Cox said of Oliver.
“… when you stop to think about it, they are no different than dogs and cats. They have capacity to suffer. They are intelligent social beings. We should give them more consideration like we do to other animals.”