Attacking Rooster!!

[smfamf]

My RIR roo is about 5 months old and started attacking me this morning. He was getting really mean too and all I did was walk through the yard. I would understand if I was messing with one of his girls. Is there anything I can do to make him quit? I have a four year old and I don't want him attacking her. I was lucky that I was wearing jeans today. If I had been wearing shorts, he would have left marks, but he just sratched up the denim.

 

[Wynette]

RIR's are notoriously bad tempered when they reach maturity. It's too bad, they are a gorgeous breed.

Check out this thread...he was successful in "retraining" his nasty roo - maybe you can find some pointers here:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=131593

Good luck! I'm of the opinion that it CAN be resolved, with patience and persistence! GOOD LUCK!!!

 

[fordmommy]

You're probably going to get a lot of conflicting answers on this topic. My person feeling is, if you HAVE to have a roo, get a nice one. If you aren't going to have them breed...just don't have a roo.

I have two sons. Almost 4 and almost 10. I also have two accidental cockerals. They are great with my boys now. But one little oops, and it's the stew pot. And I love those cockerals! But my kids are 1000x more important to me than any animal.

I pick up the cockerals every day and hold them for a while. I pet them and the boys pet them and we talk to them and anything else I can think of to keep them nice to people. And I pet them when they are perching in the evening. They have no rule over us. We're the roos and I want to keep it that way.

 

[smfamf]

Thanks for the input. I also feel my kids come first. I just don;t want to have to get rid of him unless necessary. We've had him since he was 1 day old and everyone is attached to him.

 

[fordmommy]

Quote:
That's how I feel, too. But I've also explained to my boys that the cockerals MAY have to go if they don't behave. That way, if it does come down to it, there won't be so much fuss from my boys. It's goning to be hard for all of us.

We also talked about putting them on craigslist or something like that. But I explained that If we gave them to someone else, they may end up eating them. Them my boys said no. They didn't want anyone else eating their roos. THEY wanted to eat them. It was quite funny actually. But I had to keep a staight face.

 

[smfamf]

My daughter thinks that butchering the birds is the best thing. She gets upset if we only do one or two. She wants to do them all. We bought straight-run birds knowing that any extra males would be butchered. She even helped pick out which of her ducks were on the list. We tried to save the best looking birds for breeding but now I'm starting to wonder if they were the right ones.

 

[cmom]

I had a hen that became mean and a real bully so I used rooster-red's Rooster reform on her. I would pick her up and hold her so she had to stay in my arms until I was ready to put her down, about 10-15 minutes MOL each time. It worked. She is now behaving. I did this a few months ago and so far so good...

If that doesn't work then send him to freezer camp.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=2588-Roo_behavior

 

[mstricer]

Eat him

 

[chookchick]

If your rooster is only 5 months old, and attacking you for walking across the yard, then he could very well turn out to be an aggressive roo. You could try the behavior modification techniques, but I wouldn't depend on them. Please don't let this rooster get at your 4 year old, as he could really cause some damage, if you want to keep him, keep him penned up. You won't feel too bad about getting rid of him when you are constantly looking behind your back.

 

[Emzyyy]

Like everyone else said. That didn't always work for one of my roosters so I just held him by his feet upside down until he stopped flapping. Don't show your back when walking away and be last to walk away from him if not you show submission to him and he thinks he is the dominant 'rooster'.