Animal Welfare United States Project #35495

The Rooster Project

by VINE

Project Report | Dec 30, 2024
2024 Rooster Report

By pattrice jones | Coordinator, VINE Sanctuary

Greetings, and I hope that your winter holiday season has been as festive as Crackle's spectacular head feathers! Whether you celebrate Solstice or another seasonal holiday or simply reflect on the coming of a new calendar year, please know that everybody here at VINE includes you when we feel thankful for our community.

I wanted to make sure that you see our overall Year in Review, because all of our work is interconnected, with on-site care for roosters and other animals forming the basis for all of our education and advocacy work. Please see the attached report for details. Here are a few highlights:

We won a "Spirit of the ADA" award from our state's Committee on the Employment of People with Disabilities
We won a "Radical Spark" award from a nationally prominent feminist organization led by women of color.
On-site, we used salvaged materials to build four new sanctuary features: an elevated "goat walk" inside the main barn, a "sheep retreat" adjacent to that barn, a "recreation and elevation" area within one of the foraging yards for birds, and a new bird infirmary.

The new infirmary includes new spaces for incoming roosters who either have to be quarantined and/or rehabbed before being integrated into flocks. This should help with our backlog of roosters awaiting space at the sanctuary.

There's a backlog because—as always!—we received more inquiries about surrendering roosters than any other kind of animal. As always, we provided one-on-one assistance to scores of people who were willing to keep rather than surrender roosters if we could help them with behavioral problems. As always, we took in as many roosters ourselves as we could from local situations. And, as always, we assisted with several situations in which fighting roosters seized by authorities elsewhere needed placement at and transport to other sanctuaries.

Our big disappointment this year was that we haven't yet gotten The Rooster Book to press. There are two reasons for that, one good and one bad but now resolved. The good news: When we decided to make the book more than a manual, by including stories about roosters written by multiple rescuers, we were flooded by submissions. Those stories are going to make the book so much better than it would have been, but working through them and reworking the book to accommodate them took much more time than anticipated. That problem was compounded by an on-site problem, which was that our animal care team was short-staffed for several months of the year, cutting into the time available for other projects. That problem has been solved by the arrival of our newest staff member, a bird lover who took both of the rooster photos below. We're now aiming for an early spring publication date.

THANK YOU AGAIN for your support of The Rooster Project. If you're making end-of-year donations, please do keep us in mind! Inflation has driven up the costs of black oil sunflower seeds and other provisions that the roosters here depend on us to provide, and we need all the help we can get to make sure that the roosters and other animals in our care have everything they need through the winter!

Julio II

Popinjay

Links:

The Truth About Roosters

Attachments:

2024review.pdf (PDF)

4 Attachments

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Sep 5, 2024
Cock-a-doodle-doooooo!

By pattrice jones | Coordinator, VINE Sanctuary

Did you know that roosters crow all day long, not just in the early morning? For these descendants of forest denizens, crowing evolved as a way to keep track of each other across distance despite dense foliage. A "cock-a-doodle-doo!" means "all OK over here!"

Here at VINE, we hear crowing all day long, from sunrise until sunset. Roosters in residence at the sanctuary include survivors of the poultry and egg industries, survivors of cockfighting, and birds discarded by people who keep backyard hens for their eggs.

We've got something to crow about ourselves today: We just recieved word that VINE will be receiving a Spirit of ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) award from our state government, in honor of our record of hiring, training, and retraining people with disabilities. That's what we want to be: a sanctuary that is a safe place for everybody!

As for The Rooster Project, the big focus in recent months has been getting The Rooster Book ready for publication. As you may recall, this book was initially planned as merely a manual for other sanctuaries. Then, we decided to add chapters for the general public, dispelling myths about roosters and telling the truth about these amazing birds. To make it even more accessible and engaging, we solicited stories about individual roosters from other sanctuaries and individual rooster rescuers to break up the text. We got so many that it shook up our plans, but in a good way. While the publication date has been delayed from last spring until this fall, we know that it will be worth the wait!

If you're looking for something to read while waiting for The Rooster Book to be ready, you might want to check out BIrd's-Eye Views, published by VINE Press, which includes numerous essays -- many of them featuring roosters! -- written from the grounds of the sanctuary. You can see chapter listings here.

Thank you again for your support of The Rooster Project and the roosters here at VINE Sanctuary!

Links:

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May 7, 2024
Rooster Voices

By pattrice jones | Coordinator, VINE Sanctuary

Greetings, and thank you again for your support of The Rooster Project!

It's springtime here in Vermont, and all of the roosters are very happy about that! Sunrise comes early, and the crowing begins immediately. If the person assigned to morning chores is late by even a few minutes in opening the coop doors, complaints commence.

That's one reason why we never call ourselves "the voice of the voiceless" -- we know that animals have their own voices, because we hear them every day. We do our best to listen, so that we can be good allies to the roosters and other animals here at the sanctuary.

Listening to animal voices will be the theme of our upcoming presentation at the Animal and Vegan Advocacy (AVA) Summit on May 19th, in a session entitled "Animal Voices: What Animals Are Telling Us." Since we have learned so much from roosters, you know that they will be prominently featured in our remarks. I'll also be delivering the closing keynote for that conference, again encouraging animal advocates to listen to roosters and other animals.

A couple of times this quarter, we have reached out to our Rapid Response Network, looking for homes or drivers for rescued roosters. So, let me remind you that we are ALWAYS looking for volunteers anywhere in the USA who can be called upon in the event that rescued roosters need to be driven to sanctuaries. Sign up to volunteer here.

Among the new roosters at VINE this quarter is Julio, who had previously lived only with hens. He initially seemed startled to be suddenly among so many other roosters, but he quickly learned how to interact, recognizing when other roosters wanted him to keep his distance and when they were open to closer contact. The morning after the afternoon he arrived, he was mingling freely without any conflicts at all.

According to the stereotypes about roosters, that's impossible. Our forthcoming book will dispell those rumors while teaching people who want to rescue roosters how to foster healthy and peaceful flocks. Several sanctuaries have contributed their own rooster stories to what we hope will be an engaging and enjoyable as well as instructive book. We're running a little behind our publication schedule but still hope to have it out by the end of the month or very shortly thereafter.

We'll be sure to let you know when it's available. In the meantime, THANKS AGAIN for supporting The Rooster Proiject by VINE Sanctuary via GlobalGiving!

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