The Rooster Project

Did you know that roosters crow all day long, not just early in the morning? That's because crowing evolved as a way for flocks of red junglefowl, the wild birds from whom all chickens descended, to keep track of each other while foraging in the forests of South Asia.

When a rooster crows, he's saying "Everything is OK over here!" From sunrise to sunset, from January through December, roosters at the sanctuary crow to let each other know that everything is OK. (They have other sounds that signal danger or distress.) Roosters even crow at night sometimes: If something disturbs a rooster's sleep, he wakes up and looks around. If everything is OK, he crows before going back to sleep!

Unfortunately, these cheerful sounds are not always appreciated. Some towns allow hens but not roosters in residential areas. That's one of many reasons that most of the roosters who came to the sanctuary this year were surrendered by backyard hen keepers. Sometimes they are sad to surrender beloved friends due to the demands of authorities or neighbors—one woman cried when handing over the jolly giant called Pearly last month—but too many others discard roosters as if they were trash.

That's what hatcheries do too, whether they are providing hens by the thousands for egg factories or chicks by the dozen for backyard hen keepers. 

To save the lives of roosters, we have to discourage people from keeping hens for eggs and, more generally, convince everybody to quit eating eggs.

That's why two of our pro-rooster interventions this year were centered on eggs:

1. In the spring, we created a new webpage listing all of the many alternatives to eggs and also released a DIY brochure with some of that information (and a QR code to the whole site) that anybody can print and leave at their local food co-op or public library.
2. In the fall, we created a new webpage answering one of our most frequently asked questions: What's wrong with backyard eggs?

We rolled out that page as part of our annual Veg-to-Vegan Challenge, which helps vegetarians get the eggs and other animal products out of their diets.

Also this year, we activated our Rapid Response Network of volunteers to help transport roosters rescued from cockfighting to sanctuaries. The Vermont Public Morning Edition feature about roosters here at the sanctuary was so popular that NPR shared it on its national social media platforms, spreading the truth about roosters far and wide!

I've attached VINE's 2025 Year-in-Review, so you can see what else we've been up to this year.

THANK YOU AGAIN for supporting The Rooster Project and please think of us when making your end-of-year donations!

Sincerely,

pattrice

Links:

• VINE website
• VINE on Facebook
• VINE on Bluesky

• 2025 Year-in-Review (PDF)