How to keep roosters from fighting

[silkiefrizzles]

I have a one year old silkie-cross rooster who sometimes attack people that come into the chicken coop, and a four month old Houdan cross that was supposed to be a bantam Australorp, that I am pretty sure is a rooster, that I got as a day old chick and has lived in the chicken coop (with his three sisters) since he was about one and a half weeks old. They haven't fought yet, but the younger one has tried to fight with my Easter Egger pullet. Does anyone have any ideas on hhow to make sure they don't fight? Thank you!

 

[TheKindaFarmGal]

Get rid of the silkie X. No use keeping a human aggressive rooster when there are plenty of nice ones out there. You won't have to worry about roosters fighting then, either.

Pic of the supposed cockerel?

 

[Ridgerunner]

It would be good to know if that 4 month old really is a cockerel. Photos of the head showing comb and wattles would be very useful. Another photo showing the legs, posture, and tail could also be very good. I’ll assume it is a cockerel, the behavior sounds like it.

It’s hard to stop animals from doing things that are natural. A four month old cockerel is probably going through hormone changes that are telling him to be more aggressive with the other chickens. He is going through puberty and his hormones are telling him to dominate the others. This is normal natural chicken behavior, the only way to stop it is to isolate him from the other chickens. It’s how they establish the pecking order and flock dominance. It’s always possible one could get hurt, but usually they eventually work out all these pecking order/dominance issues and you have a peaceful flock but watching them go through puberty can sometimes be hard to watch.

We all have different goals. For some of us each chicken becomes a very valuable pet, you can’t imagine that chicken not being around. I’m not like that, I don’t tolerate human aggressive roosters either. There are several threads on here that give you ways to try to tame a human aggressive rooster, sometimes with conflicting advice. I’m not going not go into details but I’ll mention that if you teach him not to attack you, it is possible he will still attack other people. Human aggressive roosters are a challenge.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

Cockerels and cock birds fight if in a flock with females. It's the way of nature that males fight for dominance of the females. There is no stopping it other than reducing the number of males or housing them in a bachelor pad. Your description of minor aggression sounds to me more like pecking order. As birds grow they try to make it higher on the ladder of status in a flock. Once a pecking order is in place it stays there until birds get very old or sick and then are challenged for position or young birds are added and grow. As they gain size and attitude they challenge for next rung of the ladder.