MONCTON — Three little roosters are waiting for their permanent home with the help of People for Animal Wellbeing (PAW) in Moncton.
“There is a little black one who enjoys being cuddled and he enjoys getting the love and the attention,” said PAW Adoption Counsellor, Cassandra Malley.
“There’s a white one who is more of an ‘I’m going to hangout and do my own thing, but I don’t mind being held’… big fan of food and the last one he’s more of an independent guy.”
The crew was found wandering around Moncton’s north end and were picked up last week ahead of the impending weather.
“It’s outside of the realm of our animal control services that we provide the city, however, we did want to ensure their safety and well being so we did have our animal control officer go out and collect the roosters,” explained PAW Operations Manager, Amanda MacNeil.
However, since the shelter is not set up for agricultural animals, bringing in the roosters meant extra research, preparation and work for the staff.
It also means the trio is housed inside the building beside bunnies right now.
“Most of the staff are still getting used to it because it isn’t something that we see all the time, but it does provide us to interact with new animals and being able to provide insight on what they need for people who are coming to potentially look at them to take them home, so it does give us that kind of opportunity,” said Malley.
These roosters were brought in as strays, after numerous social media posts about them roaming free, meaning the shelter doesn’t know their story.
However, seeing birds within city limits isn’t totally unusual since Moncton bylaws allow residents to keep four hens for egg production.
“We’re thinking in terms of the bylaw that you’re permitted to have hens or chickens, but roosters obviously are not permitted so I think unfortunately people just get into situations where they’re not sure where to turn or what to do with them so they’re letting them roam free,” said MacNeil.
“We want to drive home that abandonment of animals of any kind obviously is not acceptable.”
Currently, PAW has calls out to different organizations that are more equip and set up to house roosters and chickens. The hope is to set up a type of partnership moving forward so that if the situation happens again, the birds would have a better place to go immediately.
“We encourage people if they’re in that type of situation to reach out to agencies, obviously they can contact PAW and what we’d like to do is maybe find a home ahead of time or make sure that we’re properly prepared when the animal comes in,” said MacNeil.
As for the three current residents, Malley says that the roosters do not need to be homed together and if they are being mixed with hens, it’s more common to have only one rooster so they don’t end up fighting.
“We would like them to go home sooner rather than later so they get to live their best lives,” she said.
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