Crying Fowl: Rash Of Rooster Dumping Forces Peabody Farm Owner To Make Plea

PEABODY, MA — Madi Wood looked outside into the paddock of her small family farm in Peabody this week and noticed yet another unfamiliar face.

With a beak, feathers, talons and a bright red comb atop its head.

"Another day, another rooster dumped over our fence," Wood lamented. "Came right up to me, seems friendly. (But) dumping live animals is never okay. Please stop!"

The 24-year-old Wood said it's been a problem since she was a young girl on the farm. People get what they think are baby chickens, and one grows up to be a rooster, which are illegal to own in most residential properties, largely because of the loud cackling they do.

Then, rather than seek out a proper new home for their pet, they dump them at an area farm when no one is looking.

The issue is that some of these birds can be sick, which can then infect the other barnyard residents, and owners who do not know they are coming cannot protect them from natural predators that lurk around farms.

"There are so many options instead of leaving the poor little guys," she told Patch. "We had three of them dumped in December. We were able to catch one, but the other two were taken by coyotes. They are setting these little guys up for failure.

"We've had turkeys dumped before too. One day, you show up and they are there. And then the next day, sadly, they were just a pile of feathers because the coyotes got them."

She said the donkey that the farm added in 2022 has helped protect the birds, but even that does little to mitigate the fact that people somehow assume that because a farm has roosters that it wants more.

"I don't want to have 45 roosters," she said. "If you dump an aggressive rooster, I am the one getting attacked every day in the paddock. They carry so many diseases. You don't know whether they are sick or have mites. It's just nerve-wracking."

Wood said that the better option for anyone who finds themselves in a fowl situation is to contact the MSPCA or another larger farm that might be able to take a surrender. She said she has done it in the past as well — but wants to have the choice, be able to learn about the history of the bird to judge its health and temperament, and then know it has gone through a proper quarantine before being introduced to her brood.

"If they are going to dump them anyway, I would rather have information on them and not just show up and see a new rooster," she said.

Wood said she has about 15 photos of roosters that have been dumped at the farm since it started in 2005.

"I have adopted roosters from the MSPCA and they make great pets," she said. "They get overlooked at the shelters. If you have the space, they do add a lot to the coop. You can have a bachelor coop where all the roosters hang out together."

Kaycie McCarthy, Equine and Farm Animal Outreach and Rescue Manager at Nevins Farm in Methuen, said there are options for people who wind up with a rooster and cannot keep it. She said those include asking local animal control about a surrender, or to advertise them as free on chicken Facebook groups, where someone might want to claim them.

McCarthy's general advice is that people should not buy chicks that are unsexed if they don't live in a place that allows them to keep roosters.

Wood said she has been lucky that out of the many roosters dumped at the farm, she "has never once gotten a mean rooster."

"That is why, you would assume, people are getting rid of a rooster," she said. "But they've always come walking right up to me and have been friendly."

Still, even an affable new rooster is a challenge when it is not expected.

"I am the one who has to go running through my paddock trying to catch them with my net," she said. "It puts a lot of hassle on me. It is not OK."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)