How to keep extra roosters?

[Mrs. K]

Peekin - add to camp Kenmore, your flock is going to be highly stressed, and your pullets run ragged. In fact, I think I would pull all three roosters into the bachelor pad, and see how they grow up, later when your hens start to lay, you can pick your favorite rooster and add him to the flock. Pullets are not ready for a rooster until just shortly before they lay. A mature rooster will ignore them until getting the right signals. Immature roosters will mate anything they can catch as often as they can catch them. I find a rooster that is close to a year old or more is the best roosters to put in a flock.

Mrs K

 

[bobbi-j]

Tonight I witnessed a younger cockerel get schooled by an older hen. He's "at that age" and feeling frisky, so he jumped and was quite rough when grabbing her neck - twisting his head like he was trying to pull out feathers. He got done, and she removed a mouthful of his tail feathers!

(If a chicken can be offended, she appeared to be quite so by this brazen young bird.)

 

[Sherol]

@Mrs. K thank you for the insights! I like the idea of having some mature hens around to help train the young cockerels. As for space, I have 10 acres of my own, and I'm pretty much surrounded by corn fields and woods, so they will have significant ranging space. I haven't built the coop yet, so it can be any size. How many sqft per hen, how many sqft per rooster do you suggest? Assuming the hens and roosters live in separate coops, how far away do those coops need to be from one another to keep the roosters calm? Can they go out to free range at the same time and sleep separately,or should I alternate days so they are always separate?

@bobbi-j Thanks for sharing your story. It sounds like your flock did well once you moved your roosters to their own coop. Is that correct?

Totally agree. Same happened to me when I ordered 14 hens and 1 rooster and ended up with 12 hens and 5 roosters being sent. The flock was a mad house. Butchered 3 of the boys and have 2 roosters now. I have some 12 week olds I hatched from this flock and am starting to add the young pullets into the flock. Will pick 2 young cockerels from the new group and the rest of the youngsters and two I currently have are headed for the freezer. I hope to have a little better ratio of boys to girls as thinking will have 18 girls to the two boys. Those extra roostes took the fun out of my chickens for a few weeks till I removed them. got unsafe for me too.

 

[Mrs. K]

"Those extra roostes took the fun out of my chickens for a few weeks till I removed them. got unsafe for me too."

Often times people romance chickens, and are sure, that like with puppies, if all birds are treated nicely, if they are raised together they will act nicely and will all get along, and they won't have to cull anything.

The reality is that roosters are a crapshoot, often are violent, and can be dangerous to other birds and people. Not all will be nice, not all will be able to live in peace, and many ruin the whole chicken experience for a lot of people. Inexperienced people cannot really believe just how violent roosters can be until they see it. Even hens can be **** mean to other hens.

One really has to manage a flock to have a peaceful flock, and the way one manages a flock is with subtractions of birds not working in the flock, adding new and younger birds to maintain the flock.

Mrs K

 

[Folly's place]

Yes on all counts!!! I have always had roosters in my flock, carefully selected to add to the flock dynamics, rather than make everyone's life miserable. Right now my chicks are starting to mature, and the cockrels are going to be weeded out this weekend. They have a good life, and then they move on. Peekin, do you eat chicken? Commercial Cornishx birds don't have a good life at all; short and painful. Your birds will be able to be comfortable, act like chickens, and taste great for someone, if not you. Mary

 

[Peekin In]

We are removing the barred rock first, then will watch to see how the flock does. I do eat chicken and have no problem culling the roo's to fill the freezer ... hubby might take a little more convincing, they follow him around like the pied piper :\

 

[gypc84]

Can you keep a bachelor pen of various breeds of rooster, that you can seperate into other pens when you want chicks out of your hens? With the goats we have 3 bucks, they stay in a pen all year till breeding season then they are put in other pens with their does and later put back in the buck pen. Will roosters still fight even if they can't see the hens until they are ready to breed?

 

[Folly's place]

Some will want to kill each other, and some will be fine. The answer is "It depends". Mary

 

[gypc84]

We have lorpes now and our rooster tore the feathers out of our hens backsides breeding them. Id prefer not leaving a roo in there if they are all that bad.

 

[Wickedchicken6]

It should be pointed out that when you take a rooster out of a pen for breeding, it causes the remaining roosters to redefine who's top rooster and a whole royal rumble when you put the breeding rooster back in because they see him as a fresh rooster again. Unless you have just a couple roosters total...or add a whole bunch at once to lessen the brunt across the numbers...it's pretty hard to add just one back.
I'm a rooster collector...

I'm entertaining several roosters;
16 roosters, different sizes, penned separately from the hens but together in the chicken coop
3 OEGB and 1 young rooster with the flock
4 roosters with the male rabbits
5 roosters with the female rabbits
2 that just made it clear they were cockerels
1 that won't stay with the female rabbit bunch
and about 9 cockerels just sprouting combs
Holy...that's about 40 roosters. Hadn't actually added that all together...

Good thing I get more pullets than cockerals at hatching. A few roosters will be going...(for those with your jaw on the ground...lol!!!)

Main thing is to keep their spurs trimmed and blunted and nails trimmed smooth so they can't hurt each other or the hens.
Use vertical space.
In my case I'd let a few roosters out because I have that many hens...easier to reintroduce the roosters back "the bachelor pen."
But I'd never let a huge amount of roosters out...the hens can't take it, even with free ranging. I free range.
And yes, the roosters will still fight if they don't see hens. At least mine would.
There will also be much crowing.

(I like the crowing)