Aggressive Tom?

[Dragon Lady]

Our first two young hens (Standard bronze) arrived in February and we picked up a young tom (Royal palm x Eastern Wild) with intentions to keep them all as pets but any off-spring would be for the table. They all bonded really well.

We incubated and raised 3 poults from their eggs. One was male and two females.
We opted to harvest just the young male and keep the two young female poults for breeding.

Integrating them into the bonded adult flock was rather uncomfortable for the youngsters as they learned the pecking order. The flock have been together for a couple of months now and I still observe our older Tom pursuing the youngsters around regularly with aggressive intentions. He does court them occasionally too and I have seen one of them mating with him.

Will this aggression pass? or should I consider getting rid of the new girls? or replace the tom?

 

[chicken pickin]

How old are your 2 youngest hens?

I ask because If they are too young or too small that may be why the Tom is picking on them. Im not sure the Tom would be mating the younger hens if they were hatched this year since they may not be sexually mature. I just integrated 4 younger hens into my breeding flock a few weeks ago(I made sure to integrate when the younger hens were very close to the size of my older hens) and the Toms didn't even bat and eye. It was my older hens that chased them and pecked at them for a few days . But all has been calm since and they are now one flock. If it has been months since you integrated and you still feel the Tom is being aggressive it might very well be the Tom is the issue.

 

[birdnerd99]

I agree if the girls are too young he may not want them. If it has been a couple of months and he is still being mean to them you are going to want to get rid of him. This happened to me and I did not want get rid of mine so I took him out and put him in a seperate pen where he could not see the girls and a few weeks later I put him back in and he was fine with the girls. Good luck