Aggressive behavior- what should I do?

[ksukristin]

I've notice this morning that one of my roos is picking on the other two. I have 4 birds- 3 boys, 1 poor gal (working on fixing that ratio) and they all got along just fine until this morning. I'm guessing it is about dominance. Anyways one roo just chases the other two around and peck at them. There isn't any full on fighting (yet)

Should I isolate this bully? I can't get the additional females for awhile. All of the birds are currently 5 weeks old.

Thanks for your advice!

 

[shelleyd2008]

That's what I did with my first quail. I had only 2 hatch, and 1 button. All 3 turned out to be males. One of the A&M decided to start being a major jerk, so I moved him by himself. The other two got along fine.

I had a 'group' of youngsters that I'd kept last time I went to auction. 1 was a jumbo brown hen with a messed up foot (had gotten a piece of hair wrapped around it and lost a few toes

) and the other 3 were whites and too young for me to sex. All 3 of the whites turned out to be males, and would bully each other and that poor girl to no end! She lost quite a bit of feathers on her head and back, and also has part of her top beak missing. I took all 3 of the males out and put them in a cage together. That was about a week ago, and so far they are doing just fine without having a girl. They (males) seem to fight more if there are not enough females than if there are none, though the first 2 that I had had never been around females, and I seperated them cause the weaker one was getting beat bloody.

Anyway, so you can either remove the one aggressive one, or remove 2 of the males and pick the best for breeding. Or take the males away from the female, but then she'd be lonely

Mine was in the brooder with some baby chicks

 

[ksukristin]

wow what a crazy group you had Shelley! Luckily I haven't seen much feather loss as the pen I have them in is oversized and very roomy, so the others just run away from the bully.

I have emailed the local gal that I got these first chicks from to see if she has any more gals or would like to trade for a boy. We'll see- but in the meantime I will certainly take your advice and separate them!

Thanks so much!