1 to many rooster - Slaughter or keep?

[cassandrapettersson]

I always let my boys duke it out, & establish a winner/loser. But if it goes to far, I intervene.

what do you do when it goes to far?

 

[Yardmom]

They are just cockerals. No need to get rid of them. I personally would leave them together, so they can work it out. One thing I would watch for though is the winners personality. When the loser admits defeat the winner should not pursue (chase) after him. Getting more hens will not change things. These boys just need to work out who is boss. Since they are both young it may take a bit. Also each time one is removed and then put back they will need to fight it out again. If you prefer the 2 flock method that is ok. Your hen numbers might not fit the suggestion seen on BYC, but as long as the boys are not hurting the girls it is fine.

 

[JedJackson]

I guess I see it differently from others, but I think you should sell or give away one of them now and save yourself the heartache of watching them beat on each other. There is no guarantee that they will get along once one wins. I think it's very likely one will be picked on, and it will most likely be the Polish, who will be fairly defenseless because of the crest, which is furthermore susceptible to wounds. Especially if space is tight! That can make the aggression much worse.

 

[MysteryChicken]

what do you do when it goes to far?

Interrupt, & separate to give them a break, then put them back.

But if one is actually trying to kill the other, I separate in different coop permanently, or until I start reorganizing the birds, & try a reintroduction.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I know it's 10 hens per rooster,

Once again that magical, mystical, mythical ratio of 1 to 10 is causing confusion. Adding more girls will not prevent the boys from fighting. They will fight over 30 girls as fast as they fight over 1. More girls do not prevent barebacks or overmating either. I know you see it all the time on here but it is simply not true. That ratio comes from commercial hatcheries where they want 100% of the eggs to be fertilized. They have found that a 1 to 10 ratio with large fowl chickens pretty much assures 100% fertility. With bantams that ratio may be 1 to 12 or even 1 to 15. That is for the methods the hatcheries use. In our backyard situation one rooster can often keep as many as 20 hens fertile.

It is easy to see where this misinformation came from. Somebody read a report on how the commercial hatcheries do it and took it totally out of context. Once misinformation is let loose on the internet it will never go away.

but is there something else I could do but to slaughter one of the roosters!?

At that age they are technically still cockerels but are probably acting like young vigorous roosters with the hormones pretty strong. They are going to determine which one is boss. Usually that is by fighting as you are seeing. Sometimes that is a fight to the death or serious injury. Sometimes it isn't much more than a skirmish. The individual personalities have a lot to do with that.

Another important variable is room. What often happens when chickens have conflict is that one decides they are better off running away than continuing to fight. If one has room to run away and get away the winner often quits. The loser usually keeps their distance to not provoke another attack. If the loser cannot get away or keep their distance then the winner doesn't know they won and can keep attacking. More room does not guarantee that they will not fight to the death but it improves the odds of them working it out. In meters, how much room do you have in the coop but more importantly, outside. Hopefully in Sweden this rime of the year they have access to the outside and are not locked in the coop by weather. That may be part of your problem too. If they normally are outside but get trapped inside together then they may be too close to each other.

There are always exceptions to anything but a typical way multiple roosters get along is that each establishes his territory and attracts whichever hens they can as their own harem. These territories are often out of sight of each other. Do you have that kind of room? I have had circumstances where two males hung with each other instead of setting up a separate territory, as I said there are exceptions. Room is not always the issue but I find it to be pretty important.

What do we do? None of us in the family want to slaughter the roosters because we picked one of them as our main rooster, and the 2nd one was a suprise rooster that we're very attatched to...

You have different options other than eating or killing one.

You could either sell or give one away. Once you no longer own him you have no control over what the new owners do. They may eat him or give him a home for life.

You can keep them in two separate flocks as you have them now.

You can create a bachelor pad. That is where you have a coop and run only for the boys, no girls allowed. Many people solve this problem that way and it usually works. But you don't get guarantees.

You can try to let them fight it out. It might work or one may wind up dead.

If you want more girls, get more girls. But don't expect that to solve anything. It could complicate it for a while. If room is now tight more chickens makes it tighter. You would need to go through an integration on top of everything else.

Good luck! This is often not an easy decision to make but you often find that once you do make a decision life is a lot simpler. You simply move on.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

It's not a rule that you need 10 hens per Male, that's just for optimal fertility. Some Males do okay in flocks that have other males, some won't. Some flocks do okay with 2-3 females per male, some flocks can have 49 females and still have 2 males fighting.

 

[Chickenfeathers000]

Even though they are establishing pecking order, when one wins, he will continue to make sure that the other one is still lower then him in the pecking order, and will continue to peck at the other one.

 

[Mrs. K]

I think that roosters fighting do cause stress on your flock. Personally I am not a fan of cockfighting, and from the rooster's point of view, this really is not different than if you were getting money for people to watch.

I have never loved anything so much that they needed to be beaten to a pulp to satisfy my having them.

Roosters/cockerels do not understand sharing hens, they each want all of them. It is not the number of hens, but rather the disposition of the two roosters, and possible confinement.

Where I have seen this work best, is in a huge amount of space. I am in the camp of remove a rooster. Not what you want to hear, but I am assuming you really don't want one of them dead either.

Mrs K

 

[Chickenfeathers000]

Roosters/cockerels do not understand sharing hens, they each want all of them. It is not the number of hens, but rather the disposition of the two roosters, and possible confinement.

One of my roosters used to share a few hens, but was still mean to the other…

 

[Mrs. K]

@Chickenfeathers000 - I just don't like mean behavior in a confined flock. If you can tolerate it, so be it.