Rooster Crowing Among Herd Of Chickens In Farm

A rooster is the leader of the flock, (flocks without roosters have leaders as well, just not as fierce). It’s his “job” to watch over his flock, protect them from predators, and help them to find food.

Our rooster “Lucky” announces when it’s time to get up, time to nap, time to dust bath, time for the mid afternoon nap, time to go back to the roost and the halfway point of the night. He is always watching for the hawk that constantly terrorizes our flock, ready to fight this creature to the death if necessary to protect his hens. It is also his job to mount and impregnate each hen of laying age daily, insuring the future of the flock through procreation.

Crowing can be used as an announcement to neighboring fowl that a rooster is in residence and this is his territory and hens. They likely called back and forth to let the other flocks know where they were.

Oftentimes you will hear them crowing back and forth to each other. Chickens have a superb sense of hearing so the frequent crowing will give a rooster an idea if the rival flock and rooster are moving away or moving nearer.

Their hearing is so acute that they can determine where a noise comes from with almost pinpoint accuracy!

Making other potential rivals aware of his presence probably avoided a few fights between rival roosters. Although they will fight, they don’t really like too, the potential for injury, death or defeat are great. An injured chicken would be easy prey for a larger predator in the wild.

It has been theorized that the morning crowing ritual is initiated by a morning surge of testosterone in the rooster.

Although just a theory at present, this idea may be a good one. A rooster is at his most sexually potent in the morning and early evening, both times when crowing is usually heard more frequently.

Some roosters will crow after the hen has laid an egg, while we can’t be sure perhaps this is a way of letting the competition know his hens’ are fertile and so is he!