Rooster mates too aggressively

[Thana Skysor]

Hi!
I have a flock of 6 ten month old chickens; 5 hens and 1 rooster. Nearly all of the hens have bald spots on their backs and heads and one has a wound under her wing, not sure why but possibly the rooster? None of the other hens are wounded besides feather loss. I have previously posted about these bald spots and concluded that it was probably the rooster being too aggressive. However, the hens aren’t recovering from these because he keeps mating with them. Earlier we had to reintegrate a recovered hen back to the flock, she was sick and isolated for about 3 days. However, for the first time, we saw him grab her neck and pull her around, she was squawking like crazy. Other than the rooster, every other hen seems to accept her, and they don’t pick on her as much as they did before. In her three days of isolation she started growing back some fuzz on her head but after he mated with her, the skin on her head is raw and the fuzz is gone. The rooster has access to the ground so he can wear his claws down and his spurs are rounded at the end. He just mates with them so often, probably because there are not enough hens. However, 2 hens of the 5 have no bald spots whatsoever, I have also never seen him mate with those two. Do we have to isolate or get rid of him or is there something we can do for the girls? I know we could potentially do hen saddles but idk what to do about their heads and necks. Also it’s around spring so maybe it’s his hormones and he also attacks us if we do anything to the hens (by doing anything we mean scaring off the bully hens by running towards them so they back off) but he also protects them from predators (he fought off a hawk once and we’ve never had any hawk attacks again). We don’t want to get rid of him but we are scared he’ll really damage the hens eventually.

 

[_-Captain BRM-_]

Yeah I would definitely get rid of him. Sometimes you have to cull, and even though it's sad, your job is to protect your flock. You would kill a persistent predetor, same thing with a mean roo.

 

[Isadora]

Your cockerel (technically not a rooster until one year of age) is at a time of surging hormones. Pretty normal for him to mate frequently.
If he is a nice boy in other ways, as in, no aggression towards you, I would at the very least get saddles for the girls who have bare spots, make sure his nails and Spurs are trimmed and short enough to cause minimal damage, and separate him if necessary.
It wouldn't surprise me if he calmed down after he finishes maturing into an adult, but it's hard to say. Good luck!

 

[Thana Skysor]

Yeah I would definitely get rid of him. Sometimes you have to cull, and even though it's sad, your job is to protect your flock. You would kill a persistent predetor, same thing with a mean roo.

Thank you for your advice, we are thinking about it. The thing is, he’s never been this aggressive before but during winter when it was single digits here he had pretty bad frostbite on his comb and some on his waddles so we had to keep him inside for a while, but we brought him back out on warmer days. After he was mostly healed and the weather somewhat improved we concluded we had to put him back outside and since then we’ve noticed how aggressive he’s become. Is it possible at all to “reform” him at all or is it a lost cause? He was really alright before the frostbite.

 

[Thana Skysor]

Your cockerel (technically not a rooster until one year of age) is at a time of surging hormones. Pretty normal for him to mate frequently.
If he is a nice boy in other ways, as in, no aggression towards you, I would at the very least get saddles for the girls who have bare spots, make sure his nails and Spurs are trimmed and short enough to cause minimal damage, and separate him if necessary.
It wouldn't surprise me if he calmed down after he finishes maturing into an adult, but it's hard to say. Good luck!

Thank you! He doesn’t attack us unless we agitate the hens. I’ve only gotten attacked once. We have never hurt them but for example when we were trying to herd them into the coop once and they didn’t understand what we were trying to.

 

[aart]

we saw him grab her neck and pull her around, she was squawking like crazy.

Unacceptable, IMO...separate him, temporarily or permanently.

 

[babyratt]

Hi!
I have a flock of 6 ten month old chickens; 5 hens and 1 rooster. Nearly all of the hens have bald spots on their backs and heads and one has a wound under her wing, not sure why but possibly the rooster? None of the other hens are wounded besides feather loss. I have previously posted about these bald spots and concluded that it was probably the rooster being too aggressive. However, the hens aren’t recovering from these because he keeps mating with them. Earlier we had to reintegrate a recovered hen back to the flock, she was sick and isolated for about 3 days. However, for the first time, we saw him grab her neck and pull her around, she was squawking like crazy. Other than the rooster, every other hen seems to accept her, and they don’t pick on her as much as they did before. In her three days of isolation she started growing back some fuzz on her head but after he mated with her, the skin on her head is raw and the fuzz is gone. The rooster has access to the ground so he can wear his claws down and his spurs are rounded at the end. He just mates with them so often, probably because there are not enough hens. However, 2 hens of the 5 have no bald spots whatsoever, I have also never seen him mate with those two. Do we have to isolate or get rid of him or is there something we can do for the girls? I know we could potentially do hen saddles but idk what to do about their heads and necks. Also it’s around spring so maybe it’s his hormones and he also attacks us if we do anything to the hens (by doing anything we mean scaring off the bully hens by running towards them so they back off) but he also protects them from predators (he fought off a hawk once and we’ve never had any hawk attacks again). We don’t want to get rid of him but we are scared he’ll really damage the hens eventually.

I had the same problem many years ago. I assumed all chicken sex was brutal.