At what age will my young roosters kill/hurt eachother?

[Loralye]

I have 7 chickens, 2.5 months old, silkies and bantam cochins. There's a lot of challenging going on, especially between my 3 cochins, I think they might all be roos too...and I think a couple of my silkies are roos...

I noticed a couple of bloody pecks on combs and wattles over the last week and
I'm wondering, if I do have a bunch of roos and only 1 or 2 hens, when will they start doing real damage to eachother?

I'm really hoping I'll know who is what before they start really hurting eachother....

Also, how do you decide which roo to keep when you only have a few girls?

 

[MrFluffyandGirls]

You won't be able to keep that many roos with the pullets. The hen ratio should be at least 10 hens to a roo or the roo's will chase and harass them to no end and mate them to death. As far as keeping roos together. Mine would start to start testing each other right before they started crowing. I kept mine together in a "bachelor pad" separate from the pullets and they did have to fight it out and assert the pecking order but then settled down after it was established. It's best if you are going to keep all the roosters to keep their home away from the 2 hens so they don't get tempted and frustrated or they may squabble more.

Silkies are hard to sex and I had a hen that acted like a roo and still does. I did not certainly she was a hen until she laid her first egg. I'm not a fan of roos because I hate getting flogged so if I personally would pick the nicest one. Ha,ha. But if your wanting ti hatch out eggs I would assume to keep the one most true to type.

 

[Loralye]

You won't be able to keep that many roos with the pullets. The hen ratio should be at least 10 hens to a roo or the roo's will chase and harass them to no end and mate them to death. As far as keeping roos together. Mine would start to start testing each other right before they started crowing. I kept mine together in a "bachelor pad" separate from the pullets and they did have to fight it out and assert the pecking order but then settled down after it was established. It's best if you are going to keep all the roosters to keep their home away from the 2 hens so they don't get tempted and frustrated or they may squabble more.

Silkies are hard to sex and I had a hen that acted like a roo and still does. I did not certainly she was a hen until she laid her first egg. I'm not a fan of roos because I hate getting flogged so if I personally would pick the nicest one. Ha,ha. But if your wanting ti hatch out eggs I would assume to keep the one most true to type.

Yeah makes sense, I did some reading about roos being okay without hens around, the problem is I have 3 cochins and 4 silkies and i can really only guess as to who is a roo, but in the meantime while i try to figure out who is who I'm worried they might get more aggressive and hurt eachother.

 

[MrFluffyandGirls]

Have you posted them on here and see if anyone can sex them by appearance? If you can figure out who's who then maybe you can separate them. But I think as long as your coop/run is large enough where they can find escape from each other and feeding stations are apart so they have a chance to eat then I think they will be fine. I have a 8 young pullets together right now and they constantly spar and bicker assorting the pecking order but have not hurt each other.