My 6 1/2 month old SS (most of them anyway) have been laying for the last 5 weeks. I'm looking forward to selling some hatching eggs and some chicks for the spring. But yesterday, myroo changed his demeaner. He went from not wanting to get closer than about 4 feet to me to scheming how he can attack me from behind. I say concerned because now he is starting to be aggressive towards me, I really don't want to send him to freezer camp because it was so hard to find an organically raised roo.
What happened is that all the chickens were up on the back porch and railing and I do 't want them up there. There were 3 girls and my roo up on therailing. I picked them up one by one to put them down and of course they all try to fly and made noise as I was putting them down. By the time I got the 3rd girl down, the roo put his bead down as if he was going to start running and belched out a loud screech/noise at me that was obviously a noise to warn me. I shooed at him and then went into the house.
The next time I was outside and petting the girls, who are always around my feet and looking for food, he started approaching me cautiously and schemeing (I could tell he was trying to plan some sort of attack) and trying to walk behind me. He's done this several times and I've been keeping an eye on him. Now I don't feel I can trust turning my back to him. I'm ready to defend myself if I need to.
Is this new aggressive behavior going to continue to get worse? Is there something specific I can do to show him I 'm top roo, not him? What can I do?
LibertyChick
He sounds like he is overly protective of his girls. I have not found any tried and true way. There are some good post on BYC about ways to "tame" an aggressive roo. Also you could try a search on the net. I personally just chase any that show aggressive behavior as soon as it starts. Also picking them up. Sometimes when they are on the ground I simulate how they grab the hens (by the nap of the neck) and put the other hand on the roo's back....then press firmly (not hurting him) to the ground so he can't run away. Dominate roos will sometimes top lesser roos to prove dominance.
I do this too, but Ive never had an aggressive roo I think because I never gave them the option of being higher than me on the Roo pecking order, BESIDES Flame,(who I didn't spend the time with because I Just thought Silkies were sweet which most are, Who Knew? LOL) the red silkie Nothing helped him. but the holding and chasing worked wonders at least for the rest of them. I have 7 Roosters a Blue Orpington, 2 Salmon Favs. 3 silkies, and 1 seabright all of them are held alot whether or not they want to be,, None of my Roosters are human aggressive But the two top Roos the Blue Orp. and the Black Silkie sometimes get over aggressive with the lesser males and I only get into there squirmishs if it gets really rough, I run in and grab up the aggresser and hold him for a few and then everything calms down. And alls well. I should mention that the lesser males are just coming into their own as far as being breeders and just learning their place in the pecking order so they kinda push their luck. LOL SS are such special birds at least to me with a super personality so I would really try the taming methods they should work for ya! I so hope you can work out his problems I would hate for ya to have to cull him, Im still looking for a good male to go with my little SS girls and hope to find one soon. Good Luck! Sandy
Yes, he is very protective of the girls. I'm not sure about how much Big Red was held as a chick. He doesn't like to be held or touched for that matter. I can't seem to get close enough to do either. He freaks out if I touch him as his butt is sticking out of the chicken door.
On a different forum, someone gave me this link. http://shilala.homestead.com/roosters.html For the last couple days, I've been trying the Alpha male thing (and so has my husband) towards Big Red. It seemed to be working until I came outside today and found 3 of the chickens missing. I called...here chickie, chickie, chickie and then I heard a rustling in the leaves in my neighbor's yard. There were 2 girls and Big Red over there. The old fence on his property was all bent out of shape and they couldn't figure out how to get back into the yard. This is the first time they have escaped my yard and it was scary!
I called my husband over and we proceeded to try to get the chickens to come to us to get them back into the yard. I don't know if they knew they were doing something wrong, but they wouldn't come to me but just kept running away from me. I walked over to the fence and I heard a rustling of the leaves coming fast towards me. It was Big Red charging me from behind. This freaked me out and I had to put my foot out to defend myself. I was finally able to grab a stick and try to keep him at bay as we were trying to capture the girls.
The girls kept following him in the thick bushes where we couldn't go and my husband was finally able to chase them out and finally was able to grab one and toss her over the fence to my yard. The other girl wasn't so easy. She just kept clinging to Big Red and when we tried to grab her he would be aggressive. We were finally able to separate them and get the other girl into my yard.
Capturing Big Red was quite a feat. We tried to get him to fly over the fence, but because the fence was bent over, he just ran under it. He charged at us several times and ran around my neighbor's house. He then proceeded to cross the road with traffic and made it into the neighbors yard....which usually has 2 barking dogs chained up in it...thank God, they were in the house. Big Red wanted to run back across the road to my yard, but my husband was standing in the way of him with a stick to block him from the road. After about a minute, Big Red decided to run past my husband to my side of the road, narrowing missing a pickup truck in the process. He got him to run in between the house and a retaining wall and all the way back to the back yard...phew!!!!
After that, my husband put up some more fence between the house and the retaining wall and we proceeded to clip the girls feathers. I wasn't going to do that, but they gave me no choice. We didn't clip Big Red's feathers for 2 reasons...one we can't capture him and 2 he probably will not leave the yard if the girls aren't leaving the yard. He wasn't happy at all that one by one, his girls went missing. We picked them up one by one and went into the basement away from his reach to clip their feathers. That actually worked out really well.
Big Red's aggression didn't wane the rest of the day as he proceeded to spar with my husband. I'm hoping that over the next several days, all the aggression will stop.
So what is someone to do to calm the rooster if you can't pick him up? Do you have a link to the thread to tame the aggressive rooster?
thanks,
LibertyChick
