city boy has ? about rooster (chickens, home, best, buy)

[JT4H]

I live in a neighborhood in the city;small yards and nowhere near any farms if that makes a difference.I usually sit out on my patio in the afternoons and someone in the neighborhood has a rooster that starts crowing(?) at about 4:30pm almost every day.This doesn't bother me,but I was under the impression that roosters only crow when the sun comes up.I'm thinking that perhaps the animal is confined during the day,like a pet and let out when it's owner returns home after work.Feel free to laugh at me if you wish

[FiveHorses]

Originally Posted by JT4H

Feel free to laugh at me if you wish

No laughing - I personally think it's pretty rare that someone notices animal behaviour, let alone asks about it.

Roosters, like all birds, will "sing" for many reasons. The daybreak routine would be - again, just like any bird - about communicating, defining territory, advertising services to the ladies, and perhaps, just because they quite enjoy the sound of their own voices. While in some cases the reason for a song, or an alarm call, or defensive posturing is pretty obvious, from what I remember, researchers haven't yet been able to establish all reasons. Song birds will go on for great lengths of time with complicated and intricate song -and it's only recently that the sheer complexity has been revealed - but no one is sure why.

Given the timing of what you hear, I suspect you're quite correct - the rooster is kept confined (inside probably) until the owners return but once out, he likes to announce his presence. Repeatedly.

[hotzcatz]

Chicken soup is guaranteed to cure crowing. However, that works best when it's your own rooster. Roosters crow whenever they feel like it. Some crow all the time, others only sound off a couple of times a day. Sometimes one will get started and the rest start chiming in. We usually select our rooster by which one has a crowing sound and pattern that we like. All other roosters get eaten and then when we need a new rooster we let a bunch of chicks grow up again and then select the rooster we like the sound of out of the batch. If someone would breed a rooster which doesn't crow at all, I'd buy one!

[Submariner]

We have about 3 dozen chickens, which includes probably 8 roosters. Usually in the fall we try to cull our flock to thin it down real good, to only a few roosters. But last summer we had introduced a different breed and they matured very slowly. So we were not able to distinguish which of the younger birds were the roosters and which were hens. Now we can easily see their differences. We will incubate and brood out as many as we can through the summer, and again in the fall cull the flock down.

With 8 roosters, we see them crowing at all times of the day and night. There is no extra crowing in the mornings, nor any time schedule.

They crow when they get into little battles over dominance, they crow sometimes when they have mated with a hen. And I suspect that sometimes they crow just to hear their own voice.

Some just can not manage to crow 'on key'.

Sometimes the hens crow too, not as loud but sometimes. I have been told that the hens will only crow when they finish laying an egg. But I do not think this is true either.