We have 5 roosters and 35 hens, with plenty of room. The 4 large roosters are our original roosters and all have a hierarchy and it works well, they coexist without any big problems. They keep separate from each other and watch for hawks overhead, our dominate rooster even fought off a Coopers hawk--I saw this myself and it was pretty impressive.
We bought 15 blue egg laying pullets from Meyer Hatchery in July. They call them Lakeside Eggers. One turned out to be a male, and now at 7 months he is full of fight and has really changed the dynamics of our flock. Our 4 other large roosters are about 2 or 3 years old and believe it or not the smallish Lakeside Egger roster without any spurs has taken over the dominant rooster position by combat with our other large roosters, and he now chases the other roosters around if they get to close or mate with our hens.
My wife and I like our large roosters and want to keep them safe and let them continue as our hawk watchers, sine they do a really good job at this. The plan is to build a separate enclosure for the Lakeside Eggers by spring and keep them as a separate flock, including the feisty young rooster.
In the meantime we have put the little fighter rooster into a small henhouse--its only 4 x 6 but it has an upstairs for roosting, see the pic below. It is on the edge of our very large chicken yard (about 100 x 100 ft) and many of his sister hens hens are stopping by to look at him. He is pacing around and crowing still, but he can not get to any of the other roosters and they can not get to him.
Is it an acceptable solution to keep him in this contained area of 3 or 4 months, until springtime? What are your thoughts?
See earlier thread https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/is-this-pullet-really-a-cockerel.1550773/
We bought 15 blue egg laying pullets from Meyer Hatchery in July. They call them Lakeside Eggers. One turned out to be a male, and now at 7 months he is full of fight and has really changed the dynamics of our flock. Our 4 other large roosters are about 2 or 3 years old and believe it or not the smallish Lakeside Egger roster without any spurs has taken over the dominant rooster position by combat with our other large roosters, and he now chases the other roosters around if they get to close or mate with our hens.
My wife and I like our large roosters and want to keep them safe and let them continue as our hawk watchers, sine they do a really good job at this. The plan is to build a separate enclosure for the Lakeside Eggers by spring and keep them as a separate flock, including the feisty young rooster.
In the meantime we have put the little fighter rooster into a small henhouse--its only 4 x 6 but it has an upstairs for roosting, see the pic below. It is on the edge of our very large chicken yard (about 100 x 100 ft) and many of his sister hens hens are stopping by to look at him. He is pacing around and crowing still, but he can not get to any of the other roosters and they can not get to him.
Is it an acceptable solution to keep him in this contained area of 3 or 4 months, until springtime? What are your thoughts?
See earlier thread https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/is-this-pullet-really-a-cockerel.1550773/
