More then one rooster? Am I asking for trouble?

Originally Posted by Ridgerunner 

People have kept multiple roosters with flocks for thousands of years. Having more than one rooster is not an automatic death sentence for one of them.
The more roosters you have the more likely you are to have problems, so I generally advise to keep as few roosters as you can and meet your goals, but I don't go by any hard and fast numbers or ratios. That 10 to 1 ratio is what commercial operations use in pen breeding situations to insure fertility. They have found that due to the randomness of mating and the differences in the roosters they need about 20 roosters for 200 hens to make sure practically all the eggs are fertile. In a free range situation like you have, you'll find that an active rooster can and will keep many more than 10 hens fertile, but a rooster that is not that vigorous won’t be able to keep 10 hens fertile. When you are dealing with individuals, averages don't mean a lot.
With that many hens I do think you need a second rooster if you want fertile eggs. So if fertile eggs are your goal, I'd certainly keep the extra rooster.
One rooster will be dominant and one will not. Until the younger one matures, it will be the older. At some stage, they may fight about it. It depends on the personality of the two. If the older has a strong enough personality, he may easily stay in charge without a problem. But if the personalities are matched or the younger one is stronger, they could have some real battles. Sometimes these are fights to the death, but usually they reach an accommodation as to which is boss and the other becomes his able sidekick in taking care of the flock. It really helps if they are raised together, either as siblings or in a father-son relationship, which you will have.
How they will act when they reach this accommodation is not sure. Often they sort of divide the flock with each taking care of a portion of the hens. Either rooster may breed with any hen, even when they split the flock like this. Some people really get surprised about that when they hatch the eggs.
I have had two roosters that hung out with each other and not with any specific hens. All the eggs were fertile so they were doing their job, and there was no doubt which was the dominant, but they just liked hanging together. They are living animals. You really don’t know what they will do.
I’ve had my worst problems with overmating when I had one rooster and eight hens. I’ve had 3 roosters and 15 hens and 4 roosters with 9 hens and not had overmating or serious fighting problems. You just don’t know.