VINE Sanctuary in Springfield pioneered a once-rare form of rehabilitation for roosters rescued from cockfighting and other dangerous situations.
Cockfighting is a felony offense in all 50 states and U.S. territories, but illegal fighting rings remain popular regardless.
VINE’s work provided evidence that roosters can be successfully rehabilitated and even adopted into new flocks. Before their work took off, these birds were routinely euthanized.
The nonprofit cares for over 500 animals, including roosters, hens, ducks, turkeys, guinea fowl, cows, sheep, goats, horses, pigeons and emus, and has been based in southern Vermont since 2009.
VINE is an acronym that stands for “Veganism Is the Next Evolution.”
Cofounder Pattrice Jones' activism started early in life, spurred by being bullied as a gay kid growing up in Baltimore. They’ve advocated for queer rights, supported HIV patients in the 1990s, and served as a tenants' rights advocate. Pattrice also lives with disabilities, and through disability rights advocacy work, they met their partner — and future VINE cofounder — Miriam Jones.
"There would be no VINE Sanctuary if it weren't for the disability rights movement," Pattrice said. "We're both people with disabilities, and a majority of our staff and volunteers are people with disabilities."
Last year, VINE even won a Spirit of the ADA award from the Governor's Committee on the Employment of People with Disabilities.
VINE began in 2000, when Pattrice and Miriam were living in Maryland near factory farms and found a chicken on the side of the road.
"At first we cheered, 'Yay, you got away.' And then we realized, uh oh, this chicken is gonna die out here in the snow," Pattrice said. "So we turned the truck around, and Miriam chased the bird back and forth. I can answer the question, why did the chicken cross the road? It was to get away from Miriam, who was trying to take them to safety. And it just started from there."
That first bird came to be known as Viktor Frankl, named for the Austrian philosopher and Holocaust survivor.
As word got around that there was a new sanctuary taking in birds, calls started coming in regularly — like one from a retiring humane officer who had 24 roosters that all needed rehoming.
"She was in tears," Pattrice said. "She said she couldn't bear to kill them. And so I said, OK. And then Miriam, more sensibly, figured out how we were going to do it."
Shortly after that call, two dozen roosters arrived at the sanctuary.
About a year later, another call, another person crying and trying to prevent a group of roosters involved in cockfighting from being euthanized. Pattrice and Miriam decided to start with three of the birds.
"We had learned how roosters resolve conflicts among themselves," Pattrice said, "and we had figured out that roosters fight not out of aggression, but because they're afraid."
Pattrice described one of their first encounters with a bird rescued from cockfighting.
"As soon as I lifted him out, I could feel his heart pounding in his chest, and I could see that his pupils had responded to the fight or flight syndrome, and he was so jerky that he was trying to fly out of my hands," Pattrice said. "This was a person in a panic, and so I did the first step of our new protocol, which was to soothe, soothe, soothe."
That first step can take anywhere from a few hours to some weeks. The aim is to get the bird into a more relaxed state where it can hear and be around other roosters without going into fight or flight.
"Then the real rehab begins where they are set up in an area where they can see and be seen by the other roosters, as well as the hens," Pattrice said. "We can't teach a rooster the little side step or wing drop or any of the little signals that roosters use for each other when they're resolving an argument. They can only learn that by watching other birds."
Once the observation stage goes well, the birds are let out so they can socialize with hens and roosters alike. If they attack, they get picked up and placed back in their pen until the next try.
"Oftentimes they can't make it 30 seconds to start with, then it's a few minutes, then it's five minutes, then it's so long that you're bored and reading a book, at which point you can conclude that they're ready," Pattrice said.
Some roosters arrive at the sanctuary in need of no rehabilitation whatsoever.
"They're just so happy to not have to fight anymore," Pattrice said.
That concept may be challenging for some to believe because of a predominant cultural narrative. From film, television, children’s books, commercials, to the world of cockfighting itself, there’s no shortage of depictions of roosters in a particular light.
"Roosters are held up as avatars of traditional masculinity and are stereotyped as having all of the most toxic traits of stereotypical masculinity: aggressiveness, needing to be in charge all the time, arrogance," Pattrice said. "These are not true of roosters or of boys. These stereotypes hurt animals, but these are the stereotypes that hurt us."
