Are all roosters inherently mean or ornery?

[Bogtown Chick]

This is what I feel:

Roosters are hardwired to protect their hens first and foremost. They will establish a varying degree of respect for humans based on several things:

1) How aggressive their load of hormones are making them (5-6 month age) and how they mellow out with age thereafter. So I think breed maybe part of this if breed determines hormone loads/ or not if hormones are breed independent. I don't know if there's been any research on that.

2)Who is feeding them definitely warrants some respect from them. But dropping a food bucket by accident or nervous energy of any sort or wearing a red hat or even a change of shoes sometimes will alter that towards more aggressive behavior as they feel more threatened. Chicken brains are an unreliable thing to figure out.

3) And how much time you spend with them without excitable energy. My daughter who doesn't feed very often, will come down with me and have absolutely no problem with our roos. She has calm assertive energy at all times with them. My Son is like a twitching body of hands flailing and steps and whatever else pre-teen boys are. The Roos will put on a stance of dislike which my son will recognize, And then that of course spirals into lack of confidence in my son and tentativeness, and they smell it on him. LOL. The Roos are not so appreciative of him. It's hard sometimes to tell a toddler to be still and quiet and to take confident steps.

Even me: If I'm short on time and need to get a feeding down the hill to the coop pronto...guess who is on me with spurs flailing. My nicest roo hates it when I'm in an "excitable hurry" He's totally fearful for his hens and doesn't know what's going on with the fast person.

4)Strangers: I find kids with my kids do better than adults with me with my particular roos. I think there's a bit of tallness=more threat in that particular piece of the puzzle for us and they may sense more tentativeness with some adults

Slow, confident, holding your ground, time spent handling and not handling are keys to making it work, and a bit of understanding when there's some protection issues.

These are just things I've noticed with our Boys: New Hampshire Roo and a Cochin Bantam Roo.

 

[Mrs. K]

very good points,

 

[bj taylor]

i have a big black australorp about a year old. he's real stand-offish, but never offers a challenge. i hope things stay the way they are with him. he's a great rooster - well almost great - my girls' backsides are getting pretty bare. in his defense he is big.

 

[cubalaya]

life is too short to mess with mean roosters. i would let my granddaughter pick up any rooster here. most orientals are calm around humans but have to watch them around other chickens.

 

[carbonfibrguy]

Maybe it's the breed...I had barred rock roosters that attacked everything and practically carried switch blades, brass knuckles and had tattoos. But we have an Americana rooster now that is just as big as the rocks were but has an excellent disposition. He is very protective of his hens and his chicks and has never attacked me or my Wife and has had numerous opportunities to do so. My Wife has always sang to the chickens ever since they were little so maybe that has something to do with it. I've never sang to them but I'm the guy who brings them treats and does all of the maintenance and upkeep of the yard and coop. Maybe that carries some weight with them, who knows. I hung a medallion around one of the rocks neck once, nothing big just a plastic medallion. When he ran, it bumped against his chest and he stop dead in his tracks.That one never attacked anyone else...and he didn't run much either.

 

[LadyLuck]

When I was a kid, someone gave us a HUGE black rooster, don't know the breed (he was enormous, truly, and was fully feathered down his legs, pure black but with green "oil sheen") He followed my mom around like a puppy and never gave us kids a moments trouble, but would defend the hens even against large dogs (german shepherd). It took a pack of 3 dogs together to finally kill him. So I think they can have the "protection" instinct and still not hurt people.

In our current chicken flock, we ended up with 3 roosters, one Welsummer, so nice sized, and two small banty cochins (one was supposed to be a girl until he crowed. oops) They are all about 9-10 months old and doing their roosterly duties, but are still quite gentle, not only with us, but with each other. We have 11 hens and are raising another 6 or 8 this spring (although when we hit the chick sales, who knows what that number will soar to) so that should keep them busy enough to not get mean--I hope.