are young roos always this active?

[trunkman]

We have two 17 wk old roos and one 14 week old roo along with 4 adult hens and 11 pullets, this is my first flock so I'm learning as I go. The roos started crowing about 3 weeks ago and along with the crowing they started trying to mate with the hens. The chickens have free run of the yard all day and do what chickens do, peck at everything scratch for snacks and so on. My question is the three roos seem to have only one thing on their mind, mating. Between the three of them it seems like every 15 minutes one of the roos is chasing and mounting a hen or pullet, they seem to be a bit rough often just ending up with a beak full of feathers and a squacking hen or pullet running from them. Is this normal, it seems a bit rough to me, just wondering..

 

[Ridgerunner]

Perfectly normal. They are adolescent boys with raging hormones and a new toy. As long as the pullets and hens have room to get away, there should not be any harm done. They will probably settle down some as they mature, but it may take a few months. It also will not be as violent when the pullets mature enough to accept the advances. The adult hens are probably looking at them as young boys and may be resisting their advances also. That should change and get less violent as time passes and the hens startto look at them as roosters instead of adolescents.

Good luck!