Aggressive boys at bed time

CircusRing

Songster
Jul 19, 2020
63
69
103
Pefferlaw Ontario
Hi BYC community. I have a small flock of 12 birds, 3 of which are roosters. So that’s 3 girls for every boy. I know this is problematic. They are all 10 months old now and lately the boys have been dive bomb attacking the girls the closer it gets to bed time. They will even wait for a girl inside the coop and nab her as she’s entering the coop for the night. To combat this I’ve been locking the boys outside of the run until all the girls are safely in and on roosts for the night.

My question is, am I going to cause any issues by doing this? So far the girls are more relaxed and less panicked at night and the boys are getting used to the new routine and not stressing.

All wisdom welcomed! Thanks!
 
The biggest issue to me is that you are going to get tired of handling it that way, especially as sunset gets later and later. As far as I'm concerned, if it is inconvenient to you then you don't have a good long term solution. Having to be there and available at sunset every day is really being tied down.

As long as you are willing to manage it that way I don't see any immediate chicken issues. I suspect that as they continue to mature things can change, whether for the better or for the worse I can't guess. It's possible this won't be a problem when they finally mature but that's not a given.

As Mary said, have a Plan B ready. If you really want to keep all of them I'd have a bachelor pad ready to put two or even all three boys by themselves where they cannot intermingle with the girls. The need for something like that can come up really quickly.

I think a potential plan where you isolate all three of them now for two or three months and give them more time to mature, then turn them loose and see what happens. That might work or it might be a disaster, I don't know. But as you said, keeping al three might be a bit of a challenge.
 
The biggest issue to me is that you are going to get tired of handling it that way, especially as sunset gets later and later. As far as I'm concerned, if it is inconvenient to you then you don't have a good long term solution. Having to be there and available at sunset every day is really being tied down.

As long as you are willing to manage it that way I don't see any immediate chicken issues. I suspect that as they continue to mature things can change, whether for the better or for the worse I can't guess. It's possible this won't be a problem when they finally mature but that's not a given.

As Mary said, have a Plan B ready. If you really want to keep all of them I'd have a bachelor pad ready to put two or even all three boys by themselves where they cannot intermingle with the girls. The need for something like that can come up really quickly.

I think a potential plan where you isolate all three of them now for two or three months and give them more time to mature, then turn them loose and see what happens. That might work or it might be a disaster, I don't know. But as you said, keeping al three might be a bit of a challenge.
Thanks for that. I am concerned I’m going to become a slave to chicken bed time which for me is an issue but my husband seems to be ok with the thought so far. I’ll maybe start looking at building a bachelor pad solution as he really doesn’t want to rehome any of them. I appreciate your thoughts!
 

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