I hatched my first roo about 5 months ago now and I decided to keep him to protect my hens. He was handled a lot as a chick and was always really sweet. However in the last month he has started attacking anyone when they come into the run especially when they go to collect the eggs. So far it hasn't been anything bad since he is young. Nothing more than charging and biting at your feet. The thing is I worry that it will get worse. I have kids that are used to caring for the chickens with me and they like to interact with them. I do not want them getting hurt. I also do not want to have to deal with being attacked every time i enter the run. I have read some of the suggestions on here on how to "train" him. I have kicked him when he attacks my feet and I can use a broom or get more forceful if i need to. I am wondering though, what are the chances that he will mellow out or get worse? i know that roos can be hit or miss sometimes with aggression and i just want to make the best decision for my family. He is a bantam cochin so I am not too worried about him doing any serious damage at least not yet but I don't want to miss a window to fix this. Thanks guys!
X2 what scooter147 said, sorry. Never seen a nasty one get better, never seen a truly good one go nasty (but have seen mildly 'off' ones, with only vaguely suspicious behavior, just get worse... Learned to cull against even mildly bad signs because of that. They never went the other way and turned out alright, and mildly 'off' hens and roosters tend to produce offspring that only enlarge upon the traits their parents showed glimpses of. If you bred this one yourself, I'd bet with some hindsight you would soon spot the behavioral trends that showed you were heading towards breeding this sort of male. His mentality did not spontaneously occur in a vacuum, he inherited a large part of it).
If he were a human, he'd be basically around 12 years old at the moment, tops, still very much a juvenile, and yet he's full-on attacking you, charging and trying to beat you into submission --- the younger they start the worse they get, and the faster too, almost as a rule. It's very abnormal for any chook that age to be attacking anything other than food seriously, that's still the age of play and non-serious scuffles.
He's not mentally right in the head to be doing what he's doing. Your chances of reasoning with an unreasonable animal are nil. (Training him out of it is reliant on reasoning, basically, i.e. cause and effect, so if he attacks you, he gets whacked, or some other negative consequence, more or less).
Even when it's more seemingly rational violent behavior from an adult rooster, i.e. only attacking when someone handles 'his' hens, the chances of altering it are about nil as well. Only a very, very few people reckon they've had any success for longer than a few months... Nobody really claims permanent success.
Even if you do get that short-term maintenance-intensive management happening, as a rule it seems it must be ongoing, and his offspring, and theirs, and theirs in turn, and so on, will almost certainly all need the very same management. How much time of your day/life are you prepared to devote to managing this issue while holding out for enough generations to eradicate the trait? Also, no guarantees that will happen either, all you'd likely do is develop a strain that must be managed and can never trusted. If the underlying mentality that drives him to assault you remains intact then it will still be passed on with each generation. Good luck removing the mentality without removing the head, haven't seen that done with violent roosters, myself. It's not like countless people haven't tried.
I'd cull, he's a discredit to his breed. The breed would not have a reputation for good temperaments if people kept breeding ones like him, but some are, case in point, and it's shaming the whole breed. Those that established the breed's fine reputation would be rolling in their graves over some of the scummy mentalities that are being bred on.
If you've already resorted to kicking him and it's not gained respect, you can smash his tiny bones and it won't dissuade him. You really may as well kill him. Not to mention that it can be very damaging for children to see violence used on an animal, and can be costly if someone reports it. I've never found any violent means of managing animals were ever worth the doing. Trauma all round. Just cull the vicious ones and in so doing clear some room for the better ones, I vote.
Besides, as far as protecting your hens goes, chances are he'll never be anything more than a self-important ornament, most roosters couldn't protect hens or even themselves against anything significant... Nice thought, but the reality is often a sad joke with lots of posturing culminating in pointless death. People telling stories about their 'hero roosters' are talking almost exclusively about stupid males that killed themselves attacking a predator they couldn't possibly defeat, which usually goes on to kill the hens as well anyway. Stylish death! ...Too bad about the whole dying thing though, lol.
It's mostly an overblown idealized fantasy, unfortunately. Decent flock protection is based on your cages and other animals like livestock guardian dogs, not roosters, especially not bantam roosters.
He's already shown he has no clue what a real threat is. 'Man-fighting' is not reliably correlated to decent flock-guarding at all, though the more over-aggressive he is, the more likely he is to become one of those 'hero roos' that dies a stupid death 'defending' against a predator he should have had the sense to flee from. Plenty of hens have the same over-aggressive mentalities, but we laugh at them, only rarely calling them 'heroes' --- the end result is a dead chook either way in most cases, only rarely do they successfully see off a predator without getting hurt themselves. The most aggressive chooks I ever had were always the dumbest, without any exceptions, and never produced offspring worth keeping. Just trouble for as many generations as I bothered to keep.
Best wishes.
