Aggressive 13 Wk Old Rooster....help

[kbaij]

I ordered 25 pullet chicks from cackle, got 25 live chicks one dead in the box.Of the 25 that survived, there were 4 males. Lots of crowing. One of them is VERY aggressive, I have them seaparated from my adult hens, but he is constantly crowing and grabbing the backs of the others necks and shaking them until they scream. The other male is mostly quiet, for now....of course, the two that my daughters picked as their favorites are two of the roosters. I've never gotten males...can I keep them, I sell the extra eggs that I get...will this affect that? Do I handle the eggs differently when the time comes? I found one of the other young males dead in the coop, very scratched up, was fine the evening before. All together I have 44 chickens, 6 black star, 5 RIR's, 5 barred rock...and the much wilder Easter Eggers, are they normally so much harder to tame?..............................HELP!!

 

[mikescanlon]

sounds like you have a nice chicken dinner out there.
i dont put up with a rough rooster.

you can handle the eggs the same way, just collect once a day and put in the fridge.

or you could incubate them and have some chicks, if he's doing his job.

if you eat the aggressive rooster though, one of the other roosters will step up to the plate.

no need to have a killer rooster in your pen destroying the other birds.

 

[Eggs4Sale]

We moved our roosters to a chicken tractor for this very reason. We're fattening them up now for dinner. I don't know why, but they don't fight in there. The roosters in the trampoline coop DO fight, however. I think two of them are very aggressive due to their breed, but I don't know. They're a White-Faced black Spanish and a Blue Andalusian. I pulled two RIR roos out of there because they were so ganged up on. Anyways, the mean roos treat each other the same way they treated the hens, with the neck pulling and swinging around thing. Gotta love roosters!!!!

 

[speckledhen]

At 13 weeks, you are probably seeing some early mating behavior. It looks rough, but is pretty normal. They are teenagers who dont know any better. You wont know his true temperament till he is a few weeks older and really mating the girls, when the hormones really begin to flow.

 

[kbaij]

Here is an update, when I said that the roos were 13 weeks, I was wrong, they arrived here May 7th, I was thinking the came earlier. They are just over 10 weeks. I would like to keep the roos, if the mean one settles down , I noticed today that one of the other larger boys was putting the mean guy in his place, but he isn't as aggressive to the girls. Right now I have the youngsters separated from my adults. I was planning on putting them together in September. What is a good ratio of roo's to hens? I have 20 adults, and 20 10wk pullets...and the three unexpected Roo's. I can't free range them here (to many coyotes and other predators) but they have a large fenced in area.

 

[speckledhen]

You need at least 8-10 hens per rooster for the best ratio, though, I have fewer in my breeding pens. My blue Orp rooster has three hens (he is not an aggressive breeder, though) and my Delaware cockerel has five hens, though I will be adding three later on to his harem. My BR rooster is with 30 girls and some still have bare backs! He refused to share duties with his brother, too.