Adding a Rooster... Later.

[CombNWattles]

Like you said, everyone has to learn to read their birds’ body language by experience, but just to kickstart the process, here are a few warning signs a bird might give before attacking:

-roosters will stand very upright and watch you when you come too close if they distrust you. A calm rooster will ignore you and keep doing ambient chicken things when you approach.
-a distrustful rooster may flap his wings and crow to warn you that you’re getting too close.
-if you persist, he may or may not begin picking up and dropping small objects with his beak*, shuffling toward you sideways while eyeing you.
-eventually he will flatten his hackles (neck feathers) and charge you. If you skedaddle fast enough, he might not jump on you, but if not he will repeatedly jump and kick your legs with his spurs and beat you with his wings.

Here are some screenshots from a video of one of my roosters running toward me and the coop. He was never aggressive; he was only coming to round up the hens in the coop. If any other rooster had done this I would have climbed something to get out of his way.

Notice the flattened hackles as compared to here:

*birds will sometimes pick up and drop pieces of food to attract the attention of flockmates. This ‘tidbitting’ behavior differs from the aggressive behavior in a few things: the objects are always edible, the bird makes a series of short, high-pitched ‘bik, bik, bik!’ sounds, and they are usually focused on the food, not side-eyeing you.

sorry for the long post, I hope you find it useful!

 

[Mrs. K]

I would recommend a hen only flock for a year, so that you get some experience, if you have none. The above post is excellent. I have been on this page for a long time, and really have come to the conclusion that if you get a good rooster or a bad rooster is a crapshoot.

I am slightly more in favor of raising up a rooster hands free in a multi-generational flock produces a better rooster than the darling that will sit in you lap and allow you to pet him, until the day he flips. But I have seen rotten roosters in both scenarios and good ones too.

 

[SamLockwood]

Hey everyone,

First post (woohoo)!

We are brand new to chickens. Just built a house on acreage last year and moved in over the winter. About 2 months ago we picked up 14 pullets (we've been planning, researching, etc for the last year so this wasn't an impulse thing). So far it appears that all of our ladies are indeed ladies.

I was honestly expecting some margin of error in the pre-sexed chicks and was looking forward to having a rooster as a protector and mediator. But since they all turned out to be female, I'm thinking it might be better to wait until they are all fully grown and add the rooster in later.

Is this a smart move?

My general advice for new chicken-keepers that ask about how best to add a rooster to your flock is "don't."

Even if you're experienced they can be a handful in their adolescent (aka "tiny serial rapist") stage, and if you're new even normal rooster behaviors can be upsetting.

That being said, you do have the right idea in wanting to wait to add a rooster or two. Pullets are way too passive in most cases to deal with a hormonal cockerel: they'll either get over-mated or they'll just freak out every time he tries to mount them and get injured because of their panicked flight or he gets frustrated and attacks them.

It's best to integrate a cockerel with laying hens, the mature hens won't put up with their crap. I added the roosters when my rejuvinated flock was 8 months old, and they predictably tried to behave awfully. Initially I was worried that even under-sized they might hurt the hens, but it quickly became more apparent they boys were actually in more danger.

Another thing to think about when you get a rooster is have an "exit strategy" ready. He may either grow up to be human-aggressive or sometimes some birds just don't fit in with the rest of the flock. In my case I had guinea fowl and hens, and guineas sometimes get extremely rooster-intolerant so I already had a system in place for separating the roosters if the integration went bad, and I already knew what I was going to do a the rooster became human-aggressive.