The crow of a rooster at dawn used to be the sound of farm life. In Sonoma County this summer, it’s more like the sound of a crisis.
Local sanctuaries are overwhelmed. They’re getting daily calls about unwanted roosters — some surrendered politely, others left in boxes on the roadside. Many come from families who thought they were raising hens for eggs, only to discover that biology has its own ideas. Roughly half baby chicks are male, and no city ordinance has room for their early-morning crow.
“We get the emails and phone calls, and I have to pick up and say no every day now. It’s heartbreaking,” says Tania Soderman, who runs Sonoma Chicks Rescue outside Sebastopol. “Then they say, ‘I’ll just dump them,’ and I have to go to sleep knowing that.”
Backyard dreams, rooster reality
The backyard chicken boom has been fueled by high egg prices and the desire for a farm-to-table connection. Feed stores and big-box chains make it easy: bins of chicks, starter feed, and coops for sale right next to the dog food. What isn’t explained up front is that “straight-run” chicks are a gamble — half will grow into roosters. Even “sexed” chicks aren’t foolproof; about one in 10 still turns out to be male…