pinewoodacres
Songster
In my limited experience, you just have to play it by ear. It has a lot to do with individual temperament. Someone will always be top of the pecking order and there’s no real way around that. They can’t reason like we can; they are driven by instincts. The entire flock dynamic changes when you add or remove even just one of them.
I will note that I thought I was solving a problem by separating my run into two areas - one for just “da boys” and one for breeding. I use 2” chicken wire that’s 5ft tall and the cockerels ended up fighting hardcore through the fence. One ended up with a limp that’s just now better, and one that was super aggressive (and went to freezer camp) always had a bloody comb and wattles. The remaining ones have gotten better and don’t seem to have as many severe injuries and I have only one on each side of the divider. When I had more on the bachelor side of the run, they didn’t fight nearly as much with each other as they did across the fence. I had two boys in the breeding side at one point and those two were pretty much fine together also. I only have 9 females and half of them weren’t even to puberty yet in this time frame. I did have one smaller boy always jumping to the coop roof and coming over to the breeding side (which messed up my hatch dates as I had to stop collecting eggs) bc he was getting bullied on the bachelor side. The ones on the breeding side didn’t really care about him but they did chase him off from the females.
Anyway, all that to say, “It depends.” They can be fine together with or without females around. I would put a better divider if I did it again and I still might (another layer of smaller mesh, double layer of the chicken wire, a 1x6 board to prevent them kicking through it, a 12” opaque something or other to block their view…you get the point). What we think will help doesn’t always. If they want to get at each other, they will. Let them try to work it out and if they’re really hurting each other badly, freezer camp for the more aggressive one.
I will note that I thought I was solving a problem by separating my run into two areas - one for just “da boys” and one for breeding. I use 2” chicken wire that’s 5ft tall and the cockerels ended up fighting hardcore through the fence. One ended up with a limp that’s just now better, and one that was super aggressive (and went to freezer camp) always had a bloody comb and wattles. The remaining ones have gotten better and don’t seem to have as many severe injuries and I have only one on each side of the divider. When I had more on the bachelor side of the run, they didn’t fight nearly as much with each other as they did across the fence. I had two boys in the breeding side at one point and those two were pretty much fine together also. I only have 9 females and half of them weren’t even to puberty yet in this time frame. I did have one smaller boy always jumping to the coop roof and coming over to the breeding side (which messed up my hatch dates as I had to stop collecting eggs) bc he was getting bullied on the bachelor side. The ones on the breeding side didn’t really care about him but they did chase him off from the females.
Anyway, all that to say, “It depends.” They can be fine together with or without females around. I would put a better divider if I did it again and I still might (another layer of smaller mesh, double layer of the chicken wire, a 1x6 board to prevent them kicking through it, a 12” opaque something or other to block their view…you get the point). What we think will help doesn’t always. If they want to get at each other, they will. Let them try to work it out and if they’re really hurting each other badly, freezer camp for the more aggressive one.