UPDATE 4/16/25: An amended version of AB 928 has been referred to the Appropriations committee for a hearing on 4/30/25. Please send your messages to every member of the Appropriations committee before April 30 explaining to them the negative financial impact that AB 928 will have on the state. For example, the costs of training animal control officers (many of whom cannot even differentiate between a hen and a rooster, much less different breeds of chickens) and of impounding and killing the many hundreds of thousands of roosters that will be set free by their owners in order to comply with the rooster limits are projected to be in the millions of dollars.

UPDATE 4/8/25: Despite over 300 individuals showing up at the hearing to oppose AB 928, the Judiciary Committee passed it and sent it to the Appropriations committee for consideration, but it did so with a recommendation for revisions that address the concerns of the opposition. The amended version is here.

UPDATE 3/27/25: AB 928 has passed through the Agriculture committee. (Watch the recorded hearing here.) It will now be voted on by the Judiciary Committee on April 8, 2025. It is absolutely imperative that every organization and individual submits a Position Letter in opposition to AB 928 by 5 PM ON TUESDAY, APRIL 1 , to be entered into the legislative analysis that committee members will read before taking up a vote.

California bill AB 928, which will restrict rooster ownership in rural areas where they are currently allowed, is a horrible, anti-rooster piece of proposed legislation that will be heard by the Agriculture Committee on Weds., March 26, 2025. Please send a message to members of the committee asking them to please oppose this regressive bill!

TALKING POINTS:

  • There is a horrible, chronic problem of unwanted pet roosters

  • Most multi-rooster properties belong to rooster rescuers, not cockfighters

  • You should not punish ordinary pet roosters for the misdeeds of cockfighters anymore than you should punish all dogs to address organized dogfighting.

  • Regarding HPAI, avian influenza: blaming the movement of gamecocks for avian influenza is a red herring intended to deflect the blame from California’s massive poultry industry, which ships 685,000 chickens to slaughterhouses within the state daily and is by far the greatest threat to the public in terms of bird flu.

    • By even the most conservative estimates, California’s poultry industry is thought to be 100 to 1000 times more culpable in the proliferation of avian influenza than the cockfighting industry.

  • People who want to target cockfighting should focus instead on Calif.’s cockfighting law, which treats most cases as a misdemeanor and is considered one of the weakest in the nation.

  • This bill discriminates against people who cannot afford acreage in California. No one needs a full acre to house 3 roosters. There are plenty of happy, harmonious bachelor flocks of dozens of roosters who live on less than one acre. Acreage is less important that environmental complexity for happy flocks.

SAMPLE LETTER:

Dear Committee Member, 

As a animal lover who supports rooster rescue efforts, I urge you to OPPOSE AB 928, which would kill far more roosters than those that it might potentially help. By severely restricting the number of roosters allowed on farms and rural properties, AB 928 would decimate placement options for the countless thousands of pet roosters seeking homes every year.

AB 928 claims to target illegal cockfighting operations but it would punish the ordinary people on ordinary farms who — in the overwhelming wave of unwanted pet roosters—are the only feasible placement option for these hundreds of thousands of cast-offs from the backyard chicken industry.

The pet rooster overpopulation issue is mostly ignored (including by most large animal protection organizations), but it dwarves the issue of cockfighing in terms of numbers. That is largely because of the error rate in sexing chicks by hatcheries ensures that for every 5 baby hens sold as future egg layers, there is one baby rooster in the bunch who slipped through the screening process is shipped off to live with people in urban areas where rooster are illegal.

For example, Tractor Supply, the largest retailer of baby chicks to the general public, has stated that during its annual chick sales, its location in Santa Cruz county where roosters are mostly banned will sell an average of 2000 chicks a week — which (over the ten-week period that TSC sells chicks) amounts to 20,000 chicks annually. Given TSC’s own (conservative) estimate of a ten percent error rate in chick-sexing, that amounts to 2,000 unwanted “surprise” roosters per store every year in Santa Cruz county alone. With 91 locations in Calif., Tractor Supply alone (conservatively) accounts for over 180,000 unwanted “surprise” roosters annually in our state. That doesn’t even account for all the unwanted roosters contributed by other feed stores, online hatcheries, and backyard breeders, who collectively likely churn out 5 times that number of baby roosters.

Where are all these unwanted roosters supposed to go? It’s already hard enough to find a rooster-friendly farm in the country who still has room for another rooster. AB 928 would make it exponentially harder. There is no sanctuary on earth that can take in thousands of roosters every year, and it’s not fair to place that burden on the handful of them that are already overwhelmed with unwanted roosters.

If people want to target cockfighting, then they should focus on the state’s weak cockfighting law, which provides for only misdemeanor penalties in most cases. Just as you wouldn’t punish all dogs to get at the ones involved in organized dogfighting, you should not punish all the roosters in California because of a tiny handful of them are used in organized cockfighting.

Pet roosters are so misunderstood by most people, and there is no reason to make things even harder for them and for the people who love them. For the sake of animal welfare, I urge you to please vote NO on AB 928.