Adding a new Rooster

[J99]

my Rooster is 5 months old and runs the coop, I want to add another Rooster but I don’t want them to fight or pick on each other or the new Rooster to bully all of my pullets
How can I go about that safely?
I have enough space but they are penned

 

[aart]

I want to add another Rooster

Why do you need a second male bird?

If I add a baby chick in my existing flock wont the Rooster as well as the hens all bully it horribly ?

Most likely, depends on how you manage it.
Integration needs to be managed carefully, IMO, to reduce chances of injury.

Knowing more about your goals for keeping chickens,
your flock size(numbers, ages, genders),
your coop(size in feet by feet with pics),
would help us help you.

 

[Mrs. K]

That changes a lot of things. Many people ask these kind of questions with 4-6 hens.

Raising up a chick next year under an multi-generational flock, Pray for a broody hen, and this will probably work.

 

[DobieLover]

my Rooster is 5 months old and runs the coop, I want to add another Rooster but I don’t want them to fight or pick on each other or the new Rooster to bully all of my pullets
How can I go about that safely?
I have enough space but they are penned

Raise it as a day old chick. If you bring an "of age" cockerel into a confined pen with an existing cockerel, there will be blood.

 

[Mrs. K]

The short answer is no, you cannot do it safely. The odds of this not working are much higher than the odds of it working.

Reasons:

• Your established rooster is a cockerel, still finding his way. Roosters really do not get the notion of sharing hens. They want all the hens. To have two roosters you need about 25 hens. Sometimes then it may work.
• Your pullets and hens are going to be run ragged. They will be exposed to the fighting roosters, they will be exposed to constant mating, and bullying from the two roosters.

You would have much better luck in rehoming the rooster you have, or culling him before adding a new rooster. When a new poster asks this kind of question, one makes some assumptions: that this is your first flock, so if I am wrong, I apologize. But that would mean your hens are just coming into lay, and at any time the rooster you have could go south in behavior. Many times a rooster starts to become aggressive at this point.

Roosters take quite a bit of experience. There are many aspects to this hobby, it can be enjoyed for years. Take your time and get some experience.

Mrs K

 

[J99]

Ok this was a lot of great information, thank you
So if I want to add a Rooster, I need to wait until mine is adult age and then add a baby cockerel and there’s still some concern with that but that’s my best option . Thank you guys you’re awesome. This is my first flock , I love my Rooster, I just wanted a second one because Of breeding reasons as well as the fact that I just adore them.
I have at this time One Rooster two Drakes, 2 ducks, and 29 pullets.
I have 300 square foot in my inside coop about with roosts every where , then I have 350 square foot in the enclosed run that in the summer they sleep out there also on several roosts , then I have a more open yard they go out in the day time that’s about 550 square foot. I have a pool, four big feeding and drinking stations, and sporadic small ones through out .
My Cockerell is five months old and my pullets are 12/15 weeks old

 

[aart]

I just wanted a second one because Of breeding reasons.....I have 300 square foot in my inside coop about with roosts every where

Wow, that sounds Great!!
Can we see pics?
Maybe you can split the coop into sections for breeding?

I’m not ok with culling anything at this point

Oh, well, then best not be breeding....if you breed and hatch with either broody or incubator, you'll need to cull.

 

[Kris5902]

Oh Lord that’s so sad
I’m to empathetic for this stuff lol

And that’s ok too! You just may want to avoid doing too much breeding and hatching though if that’s the case. It’s quite easy to hatch, but much harder to re-home the boys, so a hen sets on say 6 eggs assume 3-4 boys which you will need to find places for, and figure it out beforehand, to avoid issues with conflict. Remember, although they are awesome and I wouldn’t want to have a flock without them, Roosters aren’t really necessary for a flock, and can pose a lot of challenges.

 

[Ridgerunner]

You've given out a little more information. I'm still not totally sure I know your goals with roosters or why you want another, but it sounds like it is not for fertilizing eggs. I agree with the others, if you can't handle extra roosters you don't need to be hatching. You never know how many will hatch or how many of either sex you will get. Very few of my hatches actually split 50-50. Most are in the range of 2/3 or 3/4 one sex or the other and that's hatching around 20 chicks at a time.

If the reason you want a rooster is that you like roosters, you may have other options. You may not like these options but I'll still mention some.

You can divide your coop/run into two sections or build additional facilities and bring in a mature rooster after your pullets become hens. Keep two separate flocks. The potential downside of this is that you may have biosecurity issues. It's always possible that you could bring in a disease or parasites with a new chicken. Lots of people do this and never have issues. A proper quarantine can help, but it's always possible you could introduce something. That's why I personally only bring in new chickens by hatching them myself or buy directly from an established hatchery. The risk of getting chicks from a feed store is pretty low so that's an option, but not as low as hatching your eggs or getting chicks straight from a hatchery.

Then there is the issue of what do you do with a chicken that quarantine shows to be sick. Do you try to pass a sick chicken off to someone else or do you kill him yourself? You need a plan for contingencies.

Hatcheries are not going to sell just one chick. Most have a minimum order of 15, some even 25, so they can keep each other warm while in shipping. There are a few, like MyPetChicken or Cackle, that will ship fewer, sometimes as few as three if your post office is a regional center. For most of us that minimum number is higher. They put artificial heat in with the chicks to keep them warm. Feed stores often have a minimum of six chicks. That's an attempt to avoid cruelty to animals.

One way to get around this minimum number is find a buddy to split an order with you. You might find a neighbor on the Kentucky state thread in the "Where am I? Where are you!" section of this forum. Hatcheries will often mark certain chicks in an order if you ask them, usually by putting a dot of food coloring on the head.

It is challenging to raise just one chick by itself. They are social animals and really need company to do well. You may want a couple of pullets to raise with your cockerel. Another option would be to get several males and raise them together. Instead of creating two different flocks with a rooster and hens, create a bachelor pad. If cockerels and roosters don't have females to fight over they usually can be kept together quite peacefully. They are still going to set up a pecking order but a flock of all hens will do that too. Often it's not that bad.

I'll mention these options but encourage you to not use any of them. When you deal with living animals you sometimes have to deal with dead animals, whether that is dogs, cats, goldfish, or chickens. I'm not sure how well you can handle that. Sometimes an animal is suffering so much it is a mercy to put it out of its pain. It's cruel to let it suffer. But mostly chickens can be bullies. They can treat each other brutally. The more you crowd them the more likely that kind of behavior is. That behavior often shows up when you integrate new chickens. If what you have now is working for you, don't push it.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I have enough space but they are penned

There are several posts on here where people say they have enough room yet the root of their problem is that they don't. How big, in feet, are your various coops? How big in feet are your runs? How are they connected? Photos can help. And how many chickens do you have and what ages are they now? How many total chickens do you expect to have in the future?

my Rooster is 5 months old and runs the coop, I want to add another Rooster but I don’t want them to fight or pick on each other or the new Rooster to bully all of my pullets
How can I go about that safely?

It can be hard to get chickens to behave unnaturally. If you put two males of a certain level of maturity together they will determine which is the boss. That is instinctive. But until they reach certain maturity levels age differences can go a long way in determining how they behave. You do not get guarantees of behaviors with any living animals, but a mature rooster is more likely to help take care of a baby chick of either sex than he is to harm it. You don't have a rooster yet, you have an immature cockerel. That makes it much harder to predict behaviors. An immature cockerel might be OK with chicks but is a greater risk to them.

What do you consider bullying your pullets? Again maturity plays a part on how they act but a male will mate with the females once certain maturity level are reached. That is instinctive behavior and is necessary for them to act as a flock. If you consider a male mating the females to be bullying then you don't need any males. When the males are immature cockerels and the females are immature pullets they are not going to act like mature adults. If you get baby chicks and raise them with the flock they will still go through that adolescent phase. If you bring in more immature chickens they will be in that adolescent phase. Your best bet to avoid the worst of the drama between a new male and females is to use adults.

But using adults causes another issue, that two mature males will determine which is boss. That means they will fight. If you truly have enough room it's quite possible they will work out a compromise where they work together to protect the flock. That generally means each sets up a territory out of sight of each other and each gets his own harem but there are some cases where they can work it out in tighter spaces. Even with a lot of room they could fight to the death but the less room they have the more likely a fight to the death is.

Siblings raised together that go through puberty often work it out, but things can get really rough between them and on the pullets as they go through adolescence. A baby male chick raised in a flock with a mature male can often work it out, but again adolescence can be rough. And when the cockerel reaches a certain level of maturity he may challenge the dominant male for control of the flock. They might work it out with neither being seriously hurt, or one might die. The more room you have the better your chances.

If we knew your goals and why you want a second rooster we might be able to help more. And knowing your specific size and configuration of facilities could help us come up with specific recommendations. Without that information my suggestion is to wait until they are all adults, bring in an adult rooster, and house each rooster with his hens in totally separated coops and pens so they can't get at each other. I don't know how well that might suit your goals.