This photo of the dumped roosters at Wardlaw Glade was posted on social media by Denise Peiris, leading to their rescue by Nicola Wood. Photo: Denise Peiris / supplied
A woman who already has 200 poultry says if she had not taken in 13 dumped roosters from rural Whakatāne, they would have died.
It all started when Nicola Wood - a poultry keeper from Edgecumbe - found the Facebook post by a woman who was asking if someone could help with dozens of dumped roosters that neither council nor the SPCA would remove.
"Just surfing through Facebook a couple of weeks ago, I saw these pictures of these big roosters and I saw a caption 'dumped'," she said.
Denise Peiris from Whakatane had posted images of about 20 roosters that had been dumped at Wardlaw Glade in Waimana.
She told Wood the SPCA had said it was not their job to remove the birds, and when she he rang the council they told her they would not do it either.
Wood said there was no way the roosters would survive in their outdoors - they would either starve or be ripped apart by dogs.
"So I decided that's it, I'm going to go and catch them. So that's how that happened."
Nicola Wood keeps about 100 free range chickens and has rehomed some roosters from Wardlaw Glade. Photo: Troy Baker / LDR
She said when she went with her husband and they could tell the roosters had been there a "couple of weeks".
Wood said they caught the roosters from four different places within the area they had been dumped.
She said there was a technique to catching roosters.
"You just reach up and get a firm grip and grab them."
Wood said she brought the roosters home, and some of them looked "skinny".
"They were just lucky that someone hadn't stopped and let the dogs off."
She said the roosters had been dumped next to a road with a speed limit of 100km/h
"I did see a body of one that I don't know how old it was. It obviously been hit by a car."
But she said it was a hazard for drivers too.
"Most people's instinct is to swerve and it can cause an accident."
She said if people could not take care of roosters it was best to give them away.
"The other option is you have to kill them. And if you can't do that well, then you get a friend to do it. That's way better than letting them starve or run over or ripped apart by dogs."
