Rooster collar: brilliant, or brutal?

Has anyone tried this? I hate to admit it but I giggle each time the rooster goes "squawk" but he seems to be able to do everything else an unencumbered rooster would do.

Looks to be a far better life than a soup pot, so I must say "brilliant"!

Lol.. Even his muffled crow on the video started my roo's crowing in response.. video stopped my boys are quiet again
I think it's brilliant!

My three young cockerels have got a temporary reprieve, as we have given them collars just like this.  The smallest bantam has been the hardest to get fitted right, but the two big boys are really muted (they don't sound raspy like the rooster in the video, but more like doves cooing).  They still make normal clucking and alarm noises, still eat and drink normally and are still exhibiting normal behavior:  dust baths, grazing, scratching, (attempting at) mating if they can catch an adult hen unawares.  They've had the collars for a couple days now and aren't pecking at them or trying to get them off anymore.  I hope they keep working.  We can't have crowing roosters because of our neighbors.

We'll probably still kill and eat them (or possibly only two of them), but maybe they'll get to grow up a bit more and put on some meat.  That is, if the collars continue to work and don't kill them, which according to the Amazon reviews, can happen...  

So after a month of trial and error we finally have our rooster collar down.

It can be brutal! I felt so bad for poor Romeo. So many times I almost gave up and thought that the stew pot might be a better option. I would wake up at 4am to adjust the collar. Poor buddy was harassed for weeks.

What I learned:

- Make sure you have a wide strap. 4" I think works best. If your using velcro, try to have multiple straps/adjustment points so you can make micro adjustments along the length of the strap

- Monitor your rooster. Note his comb colour. In one of my 4am adjustment sessions I made it too tight. My boyfriend check in on him later and found him half passed out in the straw. I was horrified!

- Make sure your not placing pressure on the crop! I had it place so that the pressure made him regurgitate a little every time he put his head down to eat.

It took so much trial and error. It was not a pleasant experience.

However, Romeo is now at a volume that won't piss off the neighbours, and is happy roaming around with his flock of 39 hens.

I just wanted to follow up, after three years and several roosters, we have given up using the collar.  Every rooster who wore it died young--the oldest being around 16 months when we found him unexpectedly dead.  Of the three original cockerels I mentioned above, one died after about two months of wearing it (two weeks before Freezer Camp Day).  Most of the others these past few years we just found dead, though the last one, this spring, had his collar adjusted the same day and was still warm when I found him.  I made the decision not to use it any more;  we'll get our fertilized eggs from someone else, and eat any males hatched.

I can't say it was definitely the collar, as we had other young chickens die unexpectedly, including a couple males who dropped dead never having worn it.  Still, it's not worth it in my eyes--rather a short but full life without suffocation or strangling.

I admit my immediate reaction to the rooster collar was negative, so I thought I'd make a different suggestion for people to consider and try. I have *not* done this myself, as we're rooster-legal, but I know someone who did, but she's a bit flaky.

At "bedtime" put the rooster in a low box - supposedly roosters need to stretch their necks up to crow and if they can't do so, they won't. If the box is in a closed, dark area, even better, because roosters will crow at the moon and car headlights - they are bird-brains after all. Many neighbors will tolerate crowing during the day - maybe leave him boxed a little longer on Sunday mornings if you've got neighbors who like to sleep in, so I would see if they will accept day-time crowing if you promise night-time silence. A rooster can easily go the night without feed, but if it's hot, I suggest a small hanging waterer should go in.

This could at least be a help if you've got young roosters you're trying to grow to pot-sized. I'm pretty tolerant, but the summer my neighbor had 11 of them, even I spoke up and suggested he needed to reduce the noise level! If I'd known about the box trick then, I'd have had him try it as I know he was just trying to get them a bit bigger and didn't plan to keep all of them.