Dealing with and Taming Aggressive Roosters

Lots of good information, clearly written.

Well written and informative article. And great advice.
I may have missed one important part. The one where a hundred roosters may react a hundred different ways to any or all of our attempts at getting along. As some will never accept any of our training methods, we have to decide how important an amicable rooster is compared to a good provider and protector he is for our hens. Over the past four years I have tried all of the methods presented here on BYC, and my wife continues to try them still.
Worked well on Olaff and Lttle Bit. But Rodger is having none of it. lol.
So since he is a great protector, a good scrounging provider and even great with the baby chicks, i will let him do his thing on my legs as long as he doesn't get habitual with it and does not put me or himself in danger. If he forgets the rules i will give him a stern reminder.

If we put as much effort into taming a rooster as we did making them mean few of us would ever have to get rid of one!

Excellent advice. I carry my "meanie" around often, it works. Also, I find that if I talk to them 1st & say hello, they remain calm.

Fantastic article! There's a teeny litte typo at the end where it says (of failure) instead of (or failure)
Very informative article and kept me reafibg 'till the end!

When I pick up my rooster he begins to shiver.

Great article! I am a chicken newbie, my rooster is a 20 week old EE. He was SO sweet then at about 15-16 weeks his hormones kicked in, he bit me right on the back of the leg and drew blood - I was wearing shorts. Well, that was the last time. I did/am still doing everything suggested in this article and my boy and I now have an understanding of each other. Every now and then he still starts his little dance, i just scoop him up and carry him and you can sort of feel his body go "oh s&!t", then he calms right down.
Definitely follow all this great advice!

It was well explained, and pretty much went through every situation.

This is such a great article. Read it for the second time today. It has helped me immensely in raising my two cockerels. And what a beautiful rooster that is in your photos!

Sounds to me like the most important part of staving off cockerel aggression is to maintain the top position myself. I'm sure glad I read this before my cockerels got to the rooster stage with bad attitudes. They are responding to this advice very well. One completely ignores me now when I'm in his pen. Woot!

Loved all the info!

Thank you for taking the time and effort to put this information together! I'm learning to work with a new juvenile rooster and don't want to mess it up. So far so good! I will bookmark this article as a reference for future use.

Thank you soo much for this article. We have 2 roosters and only 4 hens. Reason being we live in the woods and most likely a fox got ahold of some of them when they were young as i try to get up to 20 only to be disappointed everytime i get new ones. A crowd of them just disappears. Anyways because we dont have enough hens, one of our roosters is pretty aggresive. I have named him and i walk around the yard talking to him, i feed him separately. He's still a meany tho. Ive learned alot reading your article and will use some of these techniques.

Exactly why I joined this site. Excellent advice from experienced keepers. I have a vicious Rooster who has terrorized our whole family and know I better understand how to approach the situation better.

So true...

Understanding why they behave that way is spot on.

I've tamed a couple, so don't give up on them guys. It's never personal .

Thank you for a well written article.

Good advice on how to handle your boys. Very similar to how i treated mine and ended up with very respectful, friendly, well behaved boys!

Great article Leyla. Lots of good information, tips and tricks to modifying a 'bad' roosters behavior. Great pics. Thanks for taking the time to prepare this article, maybe it will save some roosters from 'freezer camp'!

Good article, Thank you for putting this in one place. Any object can be used to discourage the rooster. Rather than a broom, I carry gloves in my jacket pocket and for some reason my rooster is scared to death of them. I don't throw them or anything, I can simply drop one by my feet and he walks away (sometimes if he's giving me a funny look I show the glove and nothing more). He's learned that in addition to being a treat dispenser, I also make random objects fly out of the sky which sometimes land near his feet (but never AT him). He finds this unsettling. Like gloves or pine needles or leaves or seed cones from the magnolia tree, etc. The girls ignore all of these antics.

Very nice write up on an option aside of the freezer camp!