BREEDING FOR PRODUCTION...EGGS AND OR MEAT.

[DesertChic]

Maybe some are imprinting due to be handled, hand fed and petted as chicks? This article has a paragraph about male birds.... http://www.usask.ca/wcvm/herdmed/applied-ethology/Bottle-raised%20males%20can%20be%20very%20dangerous.pdf

After reading about that topic so often here on BYC, I've noticed most of the posts involve young males that were handled or hand fed as chicks, folks describing them as affectionate, gentle, babies, etc. that turned to attacking their owners upon sexual maturity. I have to wonder if a lot of it was a result of that early imprinting and resulting confusion. Maybe some cockerels are more prone to imprinting than others which could explain the varied results you are showing. It would be worthy of an experiment on deliberately ignoring male chicks during the formative months, no handling or hand feeding, etc to see if that tends to continue or if it's truly a line or breed issue.

I've heard that theory often and have wondered about it myself, but I truly don't believe it's as simple as coddling the boys too much. I handle nearly all of my birds a lot, and I've got half a dozen roosters, full-grown roosters, that are as affectionate with me as any puppy and still do an amazing job of taking care of their girls and protecting them from danger, including from people they don't know. They don't attack other people, but they are cautious around them and tend to move the girls away from them until I make it clear that everything's okay. I think some animals are just wired differently.

I had one Barred Rock rooster, Shadow, that was the meanest of any I've raised. All of his male progeny have shown varying degrees of aggressiveness, from full-on attack mode to what would be more akin to flightiness. When I cross him with the BR hens I'd raised with him, his son wasn't AS aggressive, but was still pretty bad. When I cross his daughters to a completely different rooster that tended towards keeping his distance, the off-spring showed some hostile tendencies, but was easily trained to stop attacking and to instead simply keep his distance. For about 2 weeks that boy would lunge at my feet and ankles and peck, but after two days of working to correct his behavior he's been good as gold. I still have him, as I'm growing him out more before butchering. He's dominant in the bachelor pad and literally herds the rest of the boys away from the door so I can bring them food and water, and keeps his distance until I close the pen door again. So there's one experiment...

I have also reduced my handling of a few of my NN cockerels, more out of time constraints than anything else, but haven't observed monumental differences in behavior beyond an increase in nervousness and evasiveness. Whereas my other NN boys are respectful if not downright friendly, he keeps his distance and does all he can NOT to be handled. I've only ever had one mean NN rooster, and he was delicious. His son, while slightly more nervous, is very sweet and friendly, though he prefers to "talk" with us rather than be handled. He tolerate handling, but doesn't seem to find it very dignifying.

That's the extent of my own experience and observation to date. I too would love to see genuine research on the matter, but I suspect it would have to be breed specific.

 

[Kev]

Okay, it's not chicken, but we have been breeding them for production...my first Tilapia harvest from my aquaponics setup!





The larger was measured 14-15 inches long and the smaller was 12-13 inches long. The fillets were about 3/4 of an inch thick at their thickest point. These guys had about 7 months to grow to this size. It's been a long time since either my husband or I had filleted a fish, but we didn't do too badly and I know we'll only get better at it from here.

Wow!!!! delicious looking fish, congrats! I just can imagine how proud you are!

 

[Beer can]

I don't make friends with my chickens. 'Deliberately ignore them all' I feed them and collect eggs, they do their thing, I do mine.
Had a two yr old welsummer turn into a off and on psycho, no aggression before this. Pressure cooker took care of his 'toughness'. I blame it on poor breeding, genetic. My brother witnessed the same with his buff orp rooster, told him he'd have to cull him. He put it off for a long time, then did. He still wanted a rooster around so I gave him my extra white giant. Win win for both of us, he gets a no worries rooster and I don't have to feed him anymore and still have access to him if something happens to mine.
I was actually concerned that they would not protect their hens they are so calm, never saw them puff up and fight even when I had a few other cockerels with them.
He laid my worries to rest though when he sent me this pic of his protecting his hens/training his dog to stay away from them, Lol! Puffed up like a turkey. He said the dog doesn't go anywhere near them now after being bit on the end of the nose and flogged a few times Lol!

 

[Beer can]

That looks like a nice wide hefty rooster @NanaKat

 

[Kev]

Maybe some are imprinting due to be handled, hand fed and petted as chicks? This article has a paragraph about male birds.... http://www.usask.ca/wcvm/herdmed/applied-ethology/Bottle-raised%20males%20can%20be%20very%20dangerous.pdf

After reading about that topic so often here on BYC, I've noticed most of the posts involve young males that were handled or hand fed as chicks, folks describing them as affectionate, gentle, babies, etc. that turned to attacking their owners upon sexual maturity. I have to wonder if a lot of it was a result of that early imprinting and resulting confusion. Maybe some cockerels are more prone to imprinting than others which could explain the varied results you are showing. It would be worthy of an experiment on deliberately ignoring male chicks during the formative months, no handling or hand feeding, etc to see if that tends to continue or if it's truly a line or breed issue.

Aggression has a genetic basis, is basically on a continuum of very placid-to extremely aggressive, also possible to modify the aggression- many fighting games bred to be intolerant of other roosters yet completely handleable by people, even by kids.

The aggression being genetic and variable IMO is the root cause for such a slew of differing opinions on roosters. For example a "low-middle of the curve" roo could turn human aggressive if hand raised, yet this very same roo might never attack if it were raised by a hen or 'hands off'.

Same goes for genetically non-aggressive roo remaining sweet despite being hand raised.

A roo with a very high genetic tendency to be aggressive is simply likely going to be aggressive, pretty much no matter how it is raised/handled.. with the crock pot being the only lasting treatment...

basically every one is right.. or wrong.. or partly right/wrong.

As for studies, check out the Belyaev fox experiments- fur farm foxes very quickly throwing naturally tame/puppy like foxes after selection for reduced fear/aggression response. There have been experiments placing 'tame' line fox cubs/embryos into wild/aggressive 'lines'- the transplant cubs showed their genetic history- genetic tames were tame despite their wild foster mothers and vice versa.

Similar experiements have been done with wild rats, a tame line but also a deliberately aggressive line- the more aggressive being selected etc. The rats were bred, litters raised with no handling until testing age. Tame line produced rats you could pick up without being bitten, the aggressive line really was not safe to handle without gloves.

As for chickens, Tempe Grandin made mention of a chicken line with roosters so aggressive they deliberately killed even breeding age hens placed with them.

There are examples of early on mistake in factory cage style egg production breeding- individual selection by breeding most productive hens resulted in massive drop in egg production.. turns out the most productive hens were more aggressive and caused the subordinates to drop in production by stress from being bullied.. basically this resulted in breeding hyper bullies.

When this was realized a switch was made to cage style selection- higher producing cages were selected for breeding, this resulted in hens that were more tolerant of crowded situations, less aggression, less stress response to crowding etc, allowing them to be less stressed enough to lay well. Egg production went up.


personal experience: used to have broody lines bred for hatching peafowl eggs. I wanted non aggressive hens, much easier to handle the eggs and chicks as switches/collecting was a frequent thing. Culled all hens that tried to defend by biting/fighting or screaming/fleeing the nest. Then culled juveniles via handling test- caught every bird(both sexes!) and deliberately moved hand or fist in front of their faces, if they bit, they were culled.. especially those that bit repeatedly or included a kicking motion with their bites. After a few generations, the roosters were completely non aggressive and the broodies didnt even screech, at most some would partially fluff up, especially the first timer pullets but after a couple rounds of handling they would pretty much not even react.

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

Quote:
I like this - thanks for posting!

I have one rooster (Dumbledore) who has never attacked me, but is very protective of his hens, and is my biggest asset for protection and alarming for the whole yard. He will occasionally posture at me or make a rush at me through the hardware cloth when I walk close to the coop - like he's testing me. I had gotten a heads up that his sire had also started being a bit of a jerk after he got older and was very easily managed with a spray bottle. So I started keeping a high capacity Super Soaker Zombie Dread Strike on the ground by the coop, filled, cocked and ready. Any time he tried to approach with chest puffed and challenges, he got blasted (and ran like a little girl). It didn't take very long at all before I would just start to reach down for the Super Soaker and he would suddenly skid out in the bedding and find something on the other side of the coop FASCINATING all of a sudden... He almost never does it any more - but if he does, he gets it. I swear, he's smarter than some dogs I've tried to train...

That being said, I keep him out of gratitude for saving the whole flock from dogs that broke into the yard, at real risk to his life. Not for breeding - all his sons have been obnoxious hellions that have had to be culled. It may be silly, but that was my decision after his heroic act. He looks after his hens (one of whom is nearly blind) with such care and devotion that I'm content to let him have that job, and I don't worry about their safety or wellbeing.

On the other hand, Tank was really mean to the other cockerel he lived with (had to separate them), but I ended up having to handle him daily because he escaped his paddock every night to watch over and sleep on top of his "betrothed" pullets' coop, and I would have to put him to bed. Carried him to bed (often with him laying his head on my shoulder) every night for a month until the girls were old enough to live with him. I'm not a cuddler with any of my boys, but to this day, he is the least aggressive despite all that handling - my most patient rooster, with me and with his girls. And he grew very fast as a baby. So I'm planning to get lots of babies from him...

Apoc tried to take my legs off at the knee one day when I was adding feed. He was gone by that weekend. I had bruises through my boots!

- Ant Farm

 

[NanaKat]

 


One day I hope to have a nice rooster like that- I'm trying to select for good temperaments as well as looks. They are still pretty young, but it's easy to spot the nasty fellows.

Yes, it really is. It's amazing how they can go from being sweet, affectionate little chicks to something that attacks every part of your body as soon as you get near them. :/

I have a Silver Seabright cock that follows me around, dances for me, offers me treats, but hates my muck boots. Ansel attacked one the other day. I took it off, put it in front of him and let him interact with it. Once he figured out it was harmless, he hasn't bothered them since. Back to his old self.

 

[DesertChic]

I have a Silver Seabright cock that follows me around, dances for me, offers me treats, but hates my muck boots. Ansel attacked one the other day. I took it off, put it in front of him and let him interact with it. Once he figured out it was harmless, he hasn't bothered them since. Back to his old self.

Yeah, I learned pretty quickly how sensitive they can be to our clothing. My sweetest rooster positively hates one of my T-shirts. It's teal blue, and even though he's fine with another shirt I have of nearly identical color, whenever I wear that one shirt he proceeds to peck at it and tries to rip it to shreds, all while snuggling against me or sitting on my lap while I pet him. My other birds couldn't care less about that shirt. It's the weirdest thing....

 

[NanaKat]

On the discussion of aggressive roosters...
I only hatch from breeder pens or from selected breeds in the layer flock.
Eggs I hatch are either brooded in large brooder boxes or fostered by broody hens along with their clutches.
There is no snuggling with chicks here except for the grandchildren who frequently visit.

Chicks in the brooder can sometimes be aggressive with smaller chicks and are pulled to brood together in a separate brooder. These are usually cockerels. Any that retain the attitude at three weeks when they move out of the brooders are placed in a grow out pen for the freezer.

So far, chicks raised by a hen have not shown aggression to other chicks or to other birds when they are sorted into grow out pens at 12 weeks. This may be due to the chicks acclimating to the pecking order in the flock.

The Wyandotte, Buckeye and Cochin breeds are calm breeds that rarely show aggression.
When I had Marans, those were feisty roosters that showed aggression. The hens were okay. No longer have them.
My banty hens are great mothers who fiercely protect their chicks...so interaction with these chicks on the ground doesn't happen. The roosters show territorial protection for their selected hens as they freerange but no aggression to people.

Ansel, the Seabright, came to me in a trade from his second owner. He was at least a year old, has helped raise a clutch of chicks with the hen I paired him with when he arrived. He has become a leader among the laying flock roosters. He has chosen to bond with me for whatever reason and out of curiosity will come close to inspect whatever people are doing, but stays just out of reach...typical Seabright behavior.

 

[oshun55555]

Quote: Well Bee, I don't have these kinds of issues, in the last few decades I have only had one kinda mean Cock bird, I never handle any of my chicks except to examine them, from all I have read on BYC these last few years, I am convinced the loving on them as chicks messes with their minds once the hormones kick in, btw the one cock bird i mentioned got his rear end kicked across the yard and never came close to me again, I ate him, I don't like scared chickens either.