I am having a similar issue with my 4 moth old roo. He has drawn blood from my hands 3 times and he is very aggressive against my 3 girls, pulling batches of feathers from the back of their necks. I am a first time chicken raiser and I assume he's learning how to mate. I will do everything I can not to kill him but I'm not Sure I will deal with this for the long run. I will wait till he's mature before I take that corse of action. Also, I see him take a different stance when he's about to atack me so I proceed to clap my hands and making a ch-ch-ch-ch sound from a distance that seems to work but then I walk away, not challanging him. So far so good. Good luck.
That's a very young age for him to be attacking you. When he pulls feathers out, is it because he's falling off the hen or she's pulling away, or is he the one pulling? If he's pulling them out deliberately, I'd cull. But then again I'd already cull him because he's attacking a human. Sorry, but I believe you'll regret keeping him if you do so.
They're not the utterly stupid animals some people reckon they are, they can discern perfectly fine between the humans that tend them and the wild animals that attack them. They can discern between tame and feral dogs, tame and feral cats etc just from body language alone, even with no previous experience with that individual predator... At no point does a domestic animal need to harm a human to prove it will protect against wild animals, lol, we're not the same thing in their minds.
I truly wonder why some people keep domestic poultry at all since domestic traits seems to be abhorrent to them and they're working to undo thousands of years of careful selection to procure exactly that domesticity, by breeding human-aversion back into them.
There's a great chance this rooster could do you or your hens serious, permanent harm or even kill you or someone else (toddlers are their usual victims among humans). Have you ever seen a rooster attack a child? In a matter of a few seconds he can have done irreparable, fatal harm to them, before anyone can intervene; they can also jump to an adult's head height and stab or slash multiple times per second with both spurs. Many prefer to attack from behind, because roosters who attack humans are almost always cowards and bullies. Same as roosters who harm hens or chicks.
Now you're probably thinking something like: "well, I don't have kids"/"I don't allow kids unsupervised around them" or "but he's caged", etc... but please bear in mind the long term consequences of your keeping him. Aggression is a strongly heritable trait, along with the triggers for that aggression and the preferred method of carrying it out; he can pass on his genetics many hundreds of times in his life, even thousands of times; even those sons and daughters who seem tame are carrying his traits, and they can (and do) emerge without warning.
Whoever keeps and breeds such violent human-attackers isn't ever going to be able to track their animals' descendants comprehensively or ensure that before they die, they've wrapped up their flock's malignant little genepool so it never leaks out and pollutes better, peaceful ones.
Especially because people who breed chooks that attack people believe it's a good trait, as evidenced by some here; now, I understand that point of view, but the potential ramifications of it I believe render it unjustifiable.
Imagine being responsible for breeding an animal that kills a child. Talk about a terrible legacy. That's exactly the sort of thing you are potentially doing every time you decide to keep a human-aggressive rooster; they're potentially lethally dangerous livestock and should be considered just the same as a dog that mauls. Socially unacceptable to keep and reproduce.
The responsibility for controlling your violent animals, preventing them from harming others, depends in part on you not propagating their genetics. Unfortunately some people are not socially responsible when it comes to animals demonstrating desire and having capacity to be killers.
I wouldn't waste the resources on him. A decent rooster who treats humans and hens with respect could be taking his place; instead roosters are killed for want of a good home while people persist with pieces of fecal matter who brutalize animals and people they have no justification for harming. A good rooster will defend hens without harming people, it's a false correlation to think that he's got to be an out of control psychopath who specializes in bullying in order to also be a good rooster.
Best wishes with him.
