AlHawk
Chirping
A little addition/update from the past few days.
Since my RIR roo thinks he should be jumping every hen that moves, I decided to put him in "time-out" during the day. While the hens stay in the run/coop all day, I put him out in the yard. This is day 3 of that little maneuver. Roo doesn't like being separated from the girls. He walks around the coop/pen looking lost then he stands in the middle of the yard looking even more lost. He and the dog are the only 2 in the yard and they don't play together.
Since I've done this, the eggs are not getting eaten any more (was pretty sure it was him). The hens are calmer. The 9 week old babies are now becoming more integrated with the 19 weekers. The attacking has stopped but of course there's a little correction/pecking order stuff going on but they're all living together now without major problems. The babies now use both feeders. The older ones still only use the hanging feeder; haven't figured out how to use the bucket w/ PVC elbow feeder yet. No more fights over water either.
I let all of them out about 1-2 hours before dark to mingle. Last night roo was alot calmer, didn't show off to my wife and left the babies alone. Yes, he still mounted the older hens but there was no more running and launching himself on them. I'm planning on continuing to make him be alone/separated all day and see if that doesn't calm him down a bit. Now that the babies and older hens are tolerating each other, I may put him in the cage/jail all day but separation seems to be working.
Since my RIR roo thinks he should be jumping every hen that moves, I decided to put him in "time-out" during the day. While the hens stay in the run/coop all day, I put him out in the yard. This is day 3 of that little maneuver. Roo doesn't like being separated from the girls. He walks around the coop/pen looking lost then he stands in the middle of the yard looking even more lost. He and the dog are the only 2 in the yard and they don't play together.
Since I've done this, the eggs are not getting eaten any more (was pretty sure it was him). The hens are calmer. The 9 week old babies are now becoming more integrated with the 19 weekers. The attacking has stopped but of course there's a little correction/pecking order stuff going on but they're all living together now without major problems. The babies now use both feeders. The older ones still only use the hanging feeder; haven't figured out how to use the bucket w/ PVC elbow feeder yet. No more fights over water either.
I let all of them out about 1-2 hours before dark to mingle. Last night roo was alot calmer, didn't show off to my wife and left the babies alone. Yes, he still mounted the older hens but there was no more running and launching himself on them. I'm planning on continuing to make him be alone/separated all day and see if that doesn't calm him down a bit. Now that the babies and older hens are tolerating each other, I may put him in the cage/jail all day but separation seems to be working.
