16 week cockerel behavior questions

[Ridgerunner]

I don't know what else it could be besides the fact that my other breeds are perfectly fine and don't exhibit any of the behaviors these 5 do. They have been like this since they were chicks; they are all about 18 months old.

I agree with Wrathsfarm, I do not think it is a breed thing. If you read enough posts on here you will find some of any breed (Marans, Silkies, or Orpington to mention a few) are absolute sweethearts or absolute terrors. Each chicken has its individual personality and can feed off of the personalities of the other chickens in the flock.

I do however believe individual strains of any breed can have certain traits. I am not talking about every Black Copper Marans on the planet as a strain. A strain can be one specific flock that has been bred a certain way to have certain traits, whether accidentally or on purpose. Some flocks of BCM may lay dark chocolate eggs, others eggs may be much lighter. Some hens of one strain may go broody a lot, some hardly ever. That is differences in individual strains, not a flockwide trait and can include personality traits.

I suggest solving for peace in the flock. If you are unhappy with those five, get rid of them. If you decide to try Marans in the future, get them from a different source.

 

[ChickenB12]

I agree with Wrathsfarm, I do not think it is a breed thing. If you read enough posts on here you will find some of any breed (Marans, Silkies, or Orpington to mention a few) are absolute sweethearts or absolute terrors. Each chicken has its individual personality and can feed off of the personalities of the other chickens in the flock.

I do however believe individual strains of any breed can have certain traits. I am not talking about every Black Copper Marans on the planet as a strain. A strain can be one specific flock that has been bred a certain way to have certain traits, whether accidentally or on purpose. Some flocks of BCM may lay dark chocolate eggs, others eggs may be much lighter. Some hens of one strain may go broody a lot, some hardly ever. That is differences in individual strains, not a flockwide trait and can include personality traits.

I suggest solving for peace in the flock. If you are unhappy with those five, get rid of them. If you decide to try Marans in the future, get them from a different source.

Thank you so much for your very detailed responses. I am hopeful that my Roo will come into his own. He has a good personality with the pullets I got him with and he is skittish with me but friendly its just those 5 girls.

I don't want to write off the breed totally, but I do think I am going to take a break from them before I try again. One of the five is very sweet to me but rude to everyone else, so I can see where they would be good girls. We will see.

Thank you all again! <3

 

[SamLockwood]

It's normal for a cockerel to be passive among adult hens at that age. If they're aggressive that young that's actually abnormal and not the best sign, plus having adult hens beat manners into an uppity cockerel actually helps things out in the long-run. Otherwise you'll get a rooster that has no concept of "no" and at the very least he ends up being a total jerk to the hens. At worst he'll decide to take you on as well.

How soon he'll decide to take over really depends on the cockerel. Some will start around five to six months old, others not until they're a year old.

In my current flock I've got three roosters, none of which started trying to take over until they were six months old. I had 2 shifts of "alpha rooster" before the current flock-leader took over.

The funny thing was that he was kind of a non-entity in my flock until the day he took over: shy and passive around the other birds, and he acted downright scared around people.

As flock-leader, he's very organized, hyper-vigilant, and has little tolerance for bullying or fighitng in his flock. Eventually he stopped being shy around people, but without any trace of being human-aggressive.

It really takes a year or more before you really know what you've got in a rooster: Another of my roosters was showing human-aggressive tendencies when he was around 9 months old, but fully maturing and some training got him out of that. I had another rooster that was pretty even tempered and then became a little psychopath towards the other chickens right after he turned a year old.

The all seem to behave pretty atricously when their hormones first kick in, although I've noticed if you've got mature hens or better yet an adult rooster that tends to keep the young "gentelmen" from getting too out of hand.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

It's normal for a cockerel to be passive among adult hens at that age. If they're aggressive that young that's actually abnormal and not the best sign, plus having adult hens beat manners into an uppity cockerel actually helps things out in the long-run. Otherwise you'll get a rooster that has no concept of "no" and at the very least he ends up being a total jerk to the hens. At worst he'll decide to take you on as well.

How soon he'll decide to take over really depends on the cockerel. Some will start around five to six months old, others not until they're a year old.

In my current flock I've got three roosters, none of which started trying to take over until they were six months old. I had 2 shifts of "alpha rooster" before the current flock-leader took over.

The funny thing was that he was kind of a non-entity in my flock until the day he took over: shy and passive around the other birds, and he acted downright scared around people.

As flock-leader, he's very organized, hyper-vigilant, and has little tolerance for bullying or fighitng in his flock. Eventually he stopped being shy around people, but without any trace of being human-aggressive.

It really takes a year or more before you really know what you've got in a rooster: Another of my roosters was showing human-aggressive tendencies when he was around 9 months old, but fully maturing and some training got him out of that. I had another rooster that was pretty even tempered and then became a little psychopath towards the other chickens right after he turned a year old.

The all seem to behave pretty atricously when their hormones first kick in, although I've noticed if you've got mature hens or better yet an adult rooster that tends to keep the young "gentelmen" from getting too out of hand.

Your current flock-master sounds like a gem!