Breeding for PERSONALITY. AKA Hello SWEET ROO!

I would like to see a picture of your rooster. Interesting......

enola said:

I would like to see a picture of your rooster. Interesting......

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Here you go.

This is the very non-aggressive rooster, that I believe is a Speckled Sussex.





For the sake of comparison, to my assertive and aggressive roosters.....
Here is my main Roo, Bob-a-Roo





Sherman, the barnyard bully (only bullies male humans), leaves everyone else alone.




Then sweet Rudy, assertive, but only aggressive towards Sherman.
For whatever reason, I can't seem to get the photos of Rudy uploaded. But, he has a very large rose comb.

enola said:

On one of the Legbar threads one of the posters is wondering if a thread on rooster's comb size is an indicator of testosterone/aggression. If any of you think this would be of interest, maybe we should invite her over here??

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With my duck drakes, the more aggressive boys have deeper coloring, so far. The ones I am really paying attention to are six months old. Two Welsh Harlequin boys particularly. The darker one is far more "male" than the one with lighter red on the chest and not so green a head.

SharkmanDan said:

I have two very assertive roosters and one aggressive one. None of them seem to bother with this youngster. No challenges, no fighting, no chasing away. He mixes in easily with any of them.

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Because they dont feel competition yet. When cockerel gonna start to mate hens n start crowing then things gonna happen.

This PDF was posted on a different thread and I thought it would be good information for the people here:

http://www.usask.ca/wcvm/herdmed/applied-ethology/Bottle-raised males can be very dangerous.pdf

tl:dr Hand raising males leads to greater aggression when they reach sexual maturity because they imprint on the human and see them as sexual competitors once they reach adulthood.

I can say that I raised my jersey giant roosters by hand and they have NOT become aggressive to us. But, Jersey Giants have a reputation for being very gentle. This may be a larger factor for other breeds.

MargaretYakoda said:

This PDF was posted on a different thread and I thought it would be good information for the people here:

http://www.usask.ca/wcvm/herdmed/applied-ethology/Bottle-raised males can be very dangerous.pdf

tl:dr Hand raising males leads to greater aggression when they reach sexual maturity because they imprint on the human and see them as sexual competitors once they reach adulthood.

I can say that I raised my jersey giant roosters by hand and they have NOT become aggressive to us. But, Jersey Giants have a reputation for being very gentle. This may be a larger factor for other breeds.

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We've never had a roo hatched on our property exhibit aggression towards us, even when the roo that fertilized the egg was aggressive towards humans.

We're only a couple of years into breeding here, and I look forward to having more experience under my belt, but I don't think the mere fact that a cockerel is hand-raised creates aggression in them.

We have the best Silver Spangled Hamburg roo right now that we raised from hatch. He's great with the girls, very protective of them, watching for predators, and always looking for food for them and helping them find places to lay, keeping them together. He actually picked a dozen hens out of our main flock on his own and took them over to an old coop that we had just restored and moved them in. It was an amazing thing to watch. He's never aggressive with us, but I've seen him fight other roos and chase cats or small hawks away. Good guy.