Noisy cockeral.

[p54jes]

We have acquired a cockeral to go with our three araucanas , he came to us as he was surplus to requirment at breeders and was going to be dispatched . does anyone know how to qiueten him down as I want to keep him but don`t want to upset my nieghbours
Cheers ,
P54jes.

[lynda66]

would make a nice roast

[Alice]

There's only one way to quieten him down P54jes. Give the neighbours a break and enjoy your dinner.

[FionaH]

From what I can gather, eating him is the only way to do it

[Snadger]

Put a sock over it's head!

How do you stop a cockerel from crowing? ...put a sock over it's head

[Two_Sheds]

cockerels crow, that's their job.

I don't think you're going to be able to train him not to ...

[vicky]

Keep the hen house pitch black till an acceptable time in the morning - daylight is a trigger. If that doesn't work....as above....

Speak to your neighbours before you do anything, one of ours has a cockerel and it doesn't annoy anyone!

[Nicos]

My cockerel was crowing at 4am this morning- pitch black here for another 4hrs!!!

[digthatchick]

I have heard that Sage and Onion does the trick

[Nicos]

Hmmm..my OH has just admitted to having left the light on all night in the hen house!!!
Might be worth trying to black out any light though- sounds a good idea???

[Birdie Wife]

Cockerels crow less in the dark, but they do still crow unfortunately... we were woken up at 3.30am the other night. The offending culprit was dispatched this morning - he was due for the pot anyway. This is something you have to think of before you get a cockerel really (sorry!). You might get lucky, especially as there is only one of them, he might crow a bit and then shut up as there's no competition. I've still got three crowers (and one lad not far off) and they do seem to play off each other, sadly.

[Noodle]

They do seem to set each other off don't they! Someone on another forum keeps her cockerels in her basement until 9am when all neighbours are at work, then they can crow all day and at this time of year are back in bed by the time the neighbours get back form work.

[Birdie Wife]

One other practical suggestion (though this isn't likely to work, you might like to give it a go if dispatch is really the last of all available options) is to house the little fella somewhere with a low roof - they stretch their necks up when crowing and sometimes having a low roof can prevent this happening.

I haven't heard of any successful sound-proofing option actually working, but I do know someone who sound proofed a room in his house (he was a semi-professional guitarist) by sticking egg boxes all over the walls and a thin wall in front of them.

[Macspud]

I've never found answer to this, someone suggested lowering the ceiling so that he couldn't stretch his neck to crow; I kept lowering it in stages, but short of the possibility of eventually squashing him it had no effect.

[Hilary B]

In the days when some people took 'no work on the Sabbath' really seriously, the cockerel was usually 'housed' under an upside-down log basket or similar from Saturday evening until after dark on Sunday. Supposedly this worked....