Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens (10 page)

Next morning he was still there, although obviously colder and hungrier. While my husband went to get a handful of grain to try to coax him in, I stepped out the back door and in my best chicken voice gave the
tuck-tuck-tuck
food call. The rooster stretched his neck to listen, then raced toward the door just as my husband arrived in time to help me capture the bird and bring him in to warmth, shelter, and food. As I carried the rooster inside, my astonished husband turned to me and asked, “What did you say to him?!”

The chief characteristic of roosters is their crowing, and everyone seems to have an opinion about it. Some people love it, some hate it. Which side you fall on has a lot to do with whether or not you own the rooster doing the crowing.

Why a rooster crows is a question without a definitive answer, because no one can get into the bird’s mind to find out what he’s thinking. Cocks certainly crow at first light, perhaps to announce the dawning of a new day or perhaps to proclaim, “I’m still here.” They may also crow during the dark of night, sometimes triggered by the sound of movement or a passing light, such as from a car or a switched-on porch light. They might believe an intruder is approaching, but instead of hushing up and laying low, they put on a loud show to warn off the intruder.

Cocks crow in the daytime as well, presumably to put potential challengers on notice. During Europe’s Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), marauding soldiers carried cocks to help them find livestock that villagers had hidden in the forest. When the soldiers’ cock called out, the villagers’ roosters responded with “This territory is occupied,” thus giving away themselves and their comrades.

Nicholas E. Collias studied the crowing of the four species of jungle fowl: the green jungle fowl (
Gallus varius
) of Java, the red jungle fowl (
G. gallus
) of India; the gray jungle fowl (
G. sonnerati
) also of India; and the Ceylon jungle fowl
(
G. lafayettei
) of Sri Lanka. He found that all crowing has considerable harmonic structure but each species has unique characteristics, differing in number of notes, length of crowing, accent on different notes, structure and pitch of notes, and interval between notes.

The green jungle fowl has a two-note crow that is higher in pitch than the crowing of the other species. The Ceylon jungle fowl has a three-note crow that differs from the others in having a long interval between the first and second notes. The red and gray jungle fowl both issue four notes, but the gray puts more energy into the second note, while the red puts the most energy into the third note.

Collias describes the crow of the red jungle fowl — from which most of our domestic chicken breeds originate — as being loud and complex. He confirms that a rooster crows to advertise his presence on his territory to other males and also to attract females. Two red jungle fowl cocks may engage in a crowing duel at their territorial boundaries or when competing for a hen. A dominant cock will respond to the crowing of his chief rivals, even when they are out of sight on the edge of his territory, but will usually ignore crowing by the young subordinate
cockerels he tolerates in his flock. A cock beaten in a fight stops crowing near the victor altogether.

While crowing, the cock moves his head in a specific sequence. During the first note he holds his head horizontal and stretches his neck up and forward. On the second and third notes (the latter, in red jungle fowl, being the loudest), he sways his head and neck back. On the fourth and final note, he again swings his head and neck forward.

Where one cock may utter the second and third as two separate notes, another may combine them into one note, producing three notes or energy peaks, rather than four. The crows of individual cocks differs not only in the number and length of notes, but also in their pitch and the clarity of their tones. Through these variations chickens recognize different individuals.

A rooster supposedly says
cock-a-doodle-doo
, from the Irish Gaelic
cuc-a-dudal-du
. One day I sat and listened until I heard every one of my roosters crow. Half of them said
cock-a-doodle-doo
; the other half said
a-cock-doodle-doo
. I’ve had roosters that got right to the point with
cock-doodle-doo
. Cockerels learning to crow often cut it even shorter, sounding less like they’re making a pronouncement and more like they’re asking a question:
cock-a-erk
? These early attempts can be pretty funny, but with practice the young fellows eventually get it right.

The age at which cockerels start crowing depends on how rapidly they mature, which is partially breed dependent, since some breeds mature significantly more quickly than others. Baeumer reported that chicks may be induced to crow at just a few days old by injecting them with a hefty dose of male hormone.

Since a cock inherits his style of crowing, all cocks within a given family sound somewhat similar. But each individual adds his own distinctive touch. If you have two or more roosters, you’ll be able to recognize each one by the sound of his crow.

Just as some breeds are selectively bred for good laying ability or rapid growth, others are selected for the sound or duration of their crow. At the end of a crow is a faint sound you don’t normally hear unless you’re up close and listening carefully. In a heavy cock with a deep call, it may be loud enough to hear as part of the crow. It’s also clearly audible in breeds known as longcrowers. You can make a similar sound by trying to push out the last little bit of air from your lungs.

Some cocks crow louder than others, but to my knowledge no one has ever attempted to correlate amplitude with breed, because of the difficulty of obtaining recordings that are exactly the same distance from the origin of the sound.

However, a Scottish man was cited for antisocial behavior in 2006 because his rooster crowed too early and too often and the sound supposedly exceeded the 30-decibel limit set by the World Health Organization.

A feisty little bantam cock I had attacked people’s legs without provocation. As soon as he learned we anticipated his attacks and were ready to ward them off, he developed a unique tactic. Whenever someone went into the chicken yard, he hustled to the far side of the coop and crowed repeatedly. Recognizing the sound of his crow, we knew he was too far away to attack, and we let down our guard. After a time he would stop crowing, scurry around the coop, and launch a surprise attack.

In an attempt to correlate crowing to fighting, a group of researchers at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, compared the comb lengths of 20 adult male red jungle fowl to the acoustic qualities of their crows, including the mean fundamental frequency and dominant frequency at peak amplitude. They found that roosters producing low dominant-frequency crows have longer combs than those with high dominant-frequency crows. They postulated that since comb length is a reflection of both testosterone levels and good health, it correlates with a cock’s fighting ability.

And that fighting ability is reflected in his position in the pecking order. A previous study had found a correlation between the fundamental frequency of a cock’s crow and his peck order status — cocks higher in the pecking order have higher-pitched crows than subordinate cocks.

These studies imply that if an intruding male’s crow is roughly equivalent in quality to the territorial male’s crow, the intruding cock’s next step in assessing the territorial male would be a closer inspection of his comb size. By crowing, a cock puts other males on notice, asserting his dominance without engaging in unnecessary fights.