does teenage aggression go away? cockerel turned into a bad boy

[drangle]

my cockerels recently got their hormones in and the biggest, fastest maturing australorp has started to become pretty rough with the other chickens. he bites them on the neck and tries to hold the females down to breed. today he bit my favorite pullet on the waddle and tore it.

He was my favored cockerel because he matured the fastest and always stayed out of my way. now that he is a teenager he is terrorizing the rest.

tomorrow and probably for a week or so I am going to put him in his own mini pen isolated.


will things get better after the surge of hormones die down or do I need to just cut my losses?

 

[Lacy Duckwing]

It's normal for a maturing cockerel to be out of control. They go crazy with the ladies and often don't know what they're doing. They just need time to learn and control themselves. It might be helpful to separate him until the hens are older, but that's up to you.

 

[aart]

my cockerels

How many males do you have?
How old are they, in weeks or months?
I'd suggest getting rid of all but the one you want to keep for breeding.

 

[3KillerBs]

How many males and females do you have and are they all the same age?

It's very common for cockerels to mature earlier than the pullets and to try to force the pullets to submit before the girls are ready for it -- as a matter of dominance in the flock. If you don't have mature hens (or, even better, a mature rooster), keeping the young boys in line it can be necessary to separate them until the hormonal storms calm down and the girls reach point-of-lay.

@Mrs. K has good advice about cockerels.

I'd suggest getting rid of all but the one you want to keep for breeding.

This is a very good idea. Having extra males around can make them rougher on the girls out of pure competition.

 

[drangle]

I do have too many roosters and only have one pen. I’d like to keep a few to see how they grow out but may not be able to.

They are roughly 20 weeks old. 5 Roos and 14 hens. The big bad blue Australorp is king now but I am wondering if I remove him if another will take his place and start doing the same thing.

 

[3KillerBs]

They are roughly 20 weeks old. 5 Roos and 14 hens. The big bad blue Australorp is king now but I am wondering if I remove him if another will take his place and start doing the same thing.

That's always a possibility.

It's also possible that if you remove a couple of the others then he'll calm down and feel less need to assert his dominance because of reduced competition.

Can you at least weed out two who, for whatever reason, don't deserve to breed?

That is, ones who have any significant flaw in their type/conformation? Who are less than 100% healthy and vigorous? Are too slow to mature for their breed (you can't expect a Brahma or a Jersey Giant to mature as fast as an Australorp or a Leghorn)? Who are aggressive to people?

Who you simply don't like for whatever reason?

Can you possibly throw together some kind of temporary pen? I doubt something as lightly-built as my Camp Cockerel would suit your winters, but if you made something like my brooder with a sloped roof to better shed snow load?

That way you could pull all but one boy out of the flock and see what happens but still keep one or two other candidates in case the chosen one doesn't work out.

 

[Ridgerunner]

will things get better after the surge of hormones die down or do I need to just cut my losses?

I don't give guarantees with living animals and their behaviors. Most cockerels calm down when they mature but most does not mean all. The girls have something to say in it too when they get older but right now it is the cockerel's hormones. But they don't mature in a week. It usually takes months. Many of my cockerels can take over a flock that contains pullets their age and mature hens at around 7 months of age and things are peaceful. I had one cockerel that could not do that until 11 months. Others on here have said they had some that took longer. Do you have the patience and can you get the facilities to keep him locked up until he and the pullets mature enough?

I am wondering if I remove him if another will take his place and start doing the same thing.

It is certainly possible. Often the dominant cockerel suppresses certain behaviors in the others so when he is removed they can become as bad or worse. It's unlikely things are going to be real peaceful until a certain maturity level is reached. But many times it isn't that bad.

When mine go through that the boys will chase down the pullets and forcefully mate with them but I haven't had any that were injured and bled. It is by force so it can be violent so injury is always a risk as you have seen. Usually it is not just one cockerel either but often two or three doing that. Some people say they have cockerels that work together to gang rape a pullet, it's not just a single cockerel. I haven't seen that myself but I trust the people that say they have.

Juveniles going through puberty can often be hard to watch, it can get violent. There are a lot of different thigs that can happen. Sometimes it is relatively peaceful but often it can get violent.

 

[Mrs. K]

20 weeks would be good butchering age. Just saying.

 

[drangle]

I’ve weeded out the poorest specimens already, but I’m pretty sure of which two I want to keep.