but now the promising cockerel is beating up on our 7 wk old chicks.
I'm still relatively new to breeding, only a few years in, but one of the things I look for in my cockerels is how they act with the chicks being integrated.
My first rooster, Ludwig, was a wonderful babysitter even as a young cockerel. As soon as I put the first chicks he'd ever seen into the integration pen he went and sat with them and they took their first venture out into the main run under his watchful eye.
Subsequent batches of chicks would run right underneath him to get away from a hen who was harassing them.
Rameses doesn't love chicks the way Ludwig did, but he's still good with them.
Rameses II and Seti are about to get their first trial that way next week depending on weather and feathering.