EEEEEEVILLLL RIR Rooster! - Page 3

Some of my calmest, and best fowl are American games.  My small children can handle them all day without worry.  The other thing is that the man fighting trait can be passed down to the next generation too, which is another reason to cull these birds...

Aggression can and does have a genetic trait.  Notice I said "production strains" not breed. RIR and leghorns have many production strains. Especially leghorns. One nasty strain does not mean ALL production strains are going to be the same.

There is a strain in particular, where the majority or all roosters become extremely aggressive and actually deliberately kill hens if they have access to a hen. (This strain is mentioned in one of Tempe Gradin's books) This is an extreme example but this also is proof that aggression can and does have a genetic basis.

One wonderful example are some fighting game lines, where the roosters will not think of attacking any human(and children can play with like mentioned above) but their desire to absolutely murder another rooster is not lessened in the slightest.  Other lines will fight anything, be it birds, dogs or humans.  They even have a word for those lines; "manfighters".

There are many completely non-aggressive roosters who certainly breed very vigorously. Just about the only time non-aggressiveness is a disadvantage is if a very mellow rooster is confronted with an aggressive hen who challenges him.. and he won't stand up to her. I've seen such roosters take on a tactic of sneaking up and catching her by surprise.. sometimes this ends up in the hen accepting him.. eventually..  LOL  But this is a good example of disproving that aggression is needed for fertility. Those roosters have low aggression BUT high desire to breed.

Some people like spunkiness.. nothing wrong with that.  Also absolutely nothing wrong with culling roosters that go after people.. this actually has a reasonable basis as those roosters CAN throw sons who do the same.

From my experience, behavior, viability, and almost all traits including egg laying can be linked to strain more readily than breed. Then there are bird to bird variations....

I do miss my ol RIR though. I would walk right up and steal him from his hens and he didn't even blink. Then I had a RIR who was mr attacker. They looked the same but were from different sources.

Excellent post friend, I agree with you, and was trying to say the same kind of thing in my posts.

This is all really interesting reading to me. 
I've been lucky and NEVER had a rooster that was agressive toward me (and at any given time, I have 50+ roos in the bachelor pens, the 'gone wild' yard
roos, and the roos that are breeding). 
No one has ever been the least bit aggressive toward me. 
Maybe it's a good thing that I don't like 'red chickens' .

The 'overly protective' Roo is not something I find enjoyable.

Lisa

We have been blessed to have very calm gentle roosters. Right now we are overrun with roosters. In our Big pen we have 7 full size hens and 3  Full Size roosters-a Cherry egger, a Red Sex link and a Barred Rock. We also have 5 mixed breed Bantam Roosters. They don't even fight with each other. The Sex link (Kramer) is the Boss the only time he takes after another Rooster is if they are trying to mate the hens. Even then there is no fight the other rooster just runs off. Hopefully by May all the bantam roosters will have new homes and I will have a couple more hens for my big guys.

I love our roosters and am SO Glad they are nice! We are just lucky I guess!

i have one evil and i mean really evil rooster . he is a duccle bantam and has three hens -a silkie, a sebright and another duccle:yiipchick. an example of his aggression would be when i go out to feed them (their coop has windows)  they all look ou the window and then he stats to attack the windows and doors. so then i am left to feed hem trought the nesting boxes and hae stilll finds ways to attack me!!!! another example is when i  am cleaning out the coop he will fly up and try to attack me- so i hit him down ( but i do not hurt him.)and he runs into a corner behnd the hens wich causes havock:cd:cd:cd. that makes me wonder if you have a violent rooster is violence the way to put him back in his place????!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

My RIR roo is named big red soon to be called dead red... mean mean mean. every rir roo I have ever had was always mean

Yep, RIRs, despite how commonly popular they are to new people with chickens, are prone to having the aggressive strain. I've heard so many stories of mean RIR roosters. However, I would suggest that slapping and walking away from a rooster is the last thing you should do. It basically means you give up, you lost - You really should show the rooster who's alpha, and don't walk or run away. That or eat him.