When do young roosters start to crow

By that age, cockerels will have long and pointy saddle feathers, while a hen's will be rounded. Take a look at this rooster's saddle feathers. See how long and skinny and pointy they are? Here's a close up of the feathers in a rooster's saddle. They are golden in this photo: Those saddle feathers start coming in at about 3 months. The shiny, black, curving feathers are the sickle feathers that appear a bit later and can get quite long in some breeds.

Hens just don't have those skinny saddle feathers in front of their tails--their feathers are more rounded--and they don't have long, skinny sickle feathers, either. The hackle feathers, or the feathers around the neck, are different in hens and roosters, too. Again, rooster hackles are longer and pointier. But don't be fooled. Hen hackles can look a little pointy, too. However they're not as thin or as long as rooster feathers. Take a closeup look at hen hackles: Now here's a closeup of rooster hackles to compare: Notice that you can really tell more of a difference in the slender shape of the hackles further up the neck toward the head, rather than where they meet the body feathers.

How else can you tell? Crowing is a fairly good indicator, but isn't fail-safe, either, because some hens do crow. Plus, generally speaking, you will be able to tell by feathers much earlier since roosters don't usually begin to crow until they are 4 or 5 months old.

However, we have had roosters wait until a little later, and begin a little sooner, too. To reiterate, the BEST way to tell for sure is by looking at physical characteristics that cannot be mistaken, so check feather shape when your birds are about 3 months old, as other indications are not reliable.

The shapes of these hackle and saddle feathers will indicate for sure whether you have a cockerel or a pullet For sebrights , the cockerels are "hen feathered," meaning the males have the same shape feathers as females. This helps to explain why roosters start to crow slightly before sunrise. The head rooster will lead off in the crowing, followed by his subordinates. As you can imagine, it can get quite noisy if you have more than one rooster.

The rooster does also crows in response to the daylight, and humans tend to notice this particular time of crowing because we, too, are just starting to emerge from a deep sleep. Those who may not know the ancestry of our beautiful chickens, their forbears came from Far Eastern countries such as Myanmar, Thailand, India, East Indies, and China.

They found most of these birds in the jungle and dense areas of vegetation where they would be difficult to see — even by other birds. Crowing can be used to announce to neighboring fowl that a rooster is in residence, which 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.

The potential for injury, death, or defeat is great. An injured chicken would be easy prey for a larger predator in the wild. No one knows for sure, but likely reasons are hearing something outside the coop and alerting everyone to possible danger nearby. Another theory is that perhaps a car headlight or other strong light beam disturbed them, alerting everyone of something unusual. Some roosters like to crow after mating; no one likes a tell-all kind of guy, right? 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. Some roosters will crow after the hen has laid an egg.

This is another idea that has some merit. I have a total of 9 roosters here on the farm. They will start crowing, and each rooster will take it up until they all crow. He also makes his rounds of the rooster pens to try to goad the penned rooster into a fight. They respond with the right moves for settling a score. If there is more than one rooster in the flock, there is a set order in which the crowing should go. The head rooster must crow first.

After that, the rooster pecking order dictates who will crow next and so on down the line until they are all done announcing their presence. Any bird that crows out of turn will be firmly put in his place by the head rooster.

If the lead rooster is old, sick, or weak, a younger rooster will issue a challenge, and a fight will ensue. The winner takes all. The loser may stay with the flock but maybe so shamed that he will go off independently. In the wild, flocks of roosters can live together harmoniously as long as the pecking order is observed.

These bachelor groups will eventually split up and change as roosters start their own flocks. Each bird has a subtle variation on the crow, and you can pick out which bird is crowing.

There are definitely times when a rooster crows for a particular reason. There are other times when he will crow for no particular reason — at least, not that humans know about anyway. After all , it is his yard! For more details on the rooster crows, please read our article.

So there you have it, lots of thoughts on why roosters crow; some are proven, others are good, and some need further investigation. The thread running through this article is communication. A rooster cannot sing like a bird, so the crow is his form of communication to a large audience. Crowing sounds can be slightly different in the morning from the afternoon to and evening.

He uses it as a tool to do many things. He announces the day, guards his territory, gathers the flock, and reacting to a threat. My backyard rooster crows whenever we return home or when someone pulls into the driveway. He also crows and comes to the back door for a treat if he hears my voice inside. When my rooster wants a treat, he comes to the kitchen door and crows. As for loudness, I feel for the girls when Roger begins his crowing in the early morning while they are all still in the hen house which is not very big …it but be deafening!!

Getting a rooster is very common. You need to know that it happens all the time. You need a backup plan of what to do if that happens or sadly, the rooster will lose out. My rooster is a Blue Silkie which is an unusual breed. I currently have a small farm and a suburban farmstead that want him. I think he will be happy. He is just a cute ball of gray fluff. We will just have to visit him on the farm every once in a while. This post is part of the 31 Days of Living Homegrown. Learn more about Living Homegrown here and about the Canning Academy here.