Can fighting get too serious in chicks?

[273816]

All of my three little chicks do it. Sometimes they chase eachother around the cage trying to steal it from one another. It's quite cute to watch. They seem to have fun doing it too.

 

[chooks4life]

All of my three little chicks do it. Sometimes they chase eachother around the cage trying to steal it from one another. It's quite cute to watch. They seem to have fun doing it too.

It's funny how the one running away with the prize usually seems to think it's necessary to make so much noise about it, lol! Only some of them are smart enough to keep quiet and avoid attention, but I think it may just be a game they play and being chased is sometimes more stimulating to them than getting a treat all to themselves.

 

[273816]

It's funny how the one running away with the prize usually seems to think it's necessary to make so much noise about it, lol! Only some of them are smart enough to keep quiet and avoid attention, but I think it may just be a game they play and being chased is sometimes more stimulating to them than getting a treat all to themselves.

I just assumed it was their own version of tag, haha. And my biggest is usually the one being chased. She makes an awful amount of noise.

 

[debp]

This whole field of breeding and genetics sounds fascinating. So much change in our understanding of genetics and expression of traits since I took a class in the 1970s. These are very deep answers to my simple observations and get me thinking about how to build and manage a flock eventually.

Thanks so much, chooks4life.

 

[chooks4life]

I just assumed it was their own version of tag, haha. And my biggest is usually the one being chased. She makes an awful amount of noise.

lol, that's what we used to call it too, 'chicken tag'.

This whole field of breeding and genetics sounds fascinating. So much change in our understanding of genetics and expression of traits since I took a class in the 1970s. These are very deep answers to my simple observations and get me thinking about how to build and manage a flock eventually.

Thanks so much, chooks4life.

You're very welcome and best wishes with your flock.

 

[debp]

Chooks4Life (or others),

I need some more advice. I was not having any big problems, it turns out, when I posted the question about the 4-week-old roosters fighting. But, since then I've created a big problem by separating the Barred Rocks from the NH and Br. Leghorns for a week and trying to reintroduce them in the coop (the Barred Rocks were behind in feathering). Now, everyone is upset and relationships seem to be a mess.
What I've noticed is the NH roos are so far pretty good about not carrying things on, but it turns out one of the Leghorn pullets is mean as snot. She pecks at almost everyone else and pecks really hard, making her victims screech. I hate to cull her, as I want her for eggs, and I only have 5 leghorns. I don't plan on breeding anytime soon. I have a lot to learn about the basics.

I have 2 questions. I was thinking of getting more leghorns because they are efficient egg producers, and I like that they are a bit aloof - helps me not get so emotionally attached. They were getting much less flighty lately. But, are leghorns generally more aggressive and nasty toward each other than dual purpose like the NH? I think only one is acting up, but I have trouble telling them apart. And, might she just be going through a bad spell (stressed), because I never saw this behavior until the general unrest in the coop with the reintroduction?

 

[chooks4life]

She pecks at almost everyone else and pecks really hard, making her victims screech. I hate to cull her, as I want her for eggs, and I only have 5 leghorns. I don't plan on breeding anytime soon. I have a lot to learn about the basics.

Ah, lol, Leghorns... One breed that often gets noticed for all the wrong reasons. There's some important factors to know about high production commercial breeds, which will possibly influence how you build your flock and what to expect from certain breeds and why. Apologies in advance, this is a bit long and somewhat off-topic in an interconnected sort of way....

Leghorns being mean to others is commonly a trait people note about them. They're not all that way of course but hatchery stock of any sort are more likely to be behaviorally malignant than birds from backyards or farms, and it comes down to how they are bred, raised, and why, and on what diet. This is why breeding this out of them can result in basically breeding a different breed from the original ancestors, so you'd end up with new, improved, non-Leghorn Leghorns... Who probably would lay less. If that makes sense. It's also why you'd have to hunt long and hard to find the best Leghorns, unless you get lucky.

The vast majority of all Leghorns you will see all hail pretty recently or even directly from intensive hatcheries, meaning not a small backyard breeder, though they too can produce some seriously bad birds by replicating the conditions.

They are the way they are because, like all high producing breeds, when you select for certain traits under certain environments, and on certain diets, the end result is always similar in appearance and function no matter how you got there. The criteria shape the result. With most Leghorns, they have been selected for terminally high production, to live on the lowest possible cost diets, due for very early culling, and designed to live in intensively restrictive and overcrowded environments for the very short duration of their lifespans. A lot of negative traits arise from those factors and remain driven by them, and they're very heritable.

Putting them onto better diets, in better environments, and letting them live beyond the average cull date, doesn't actually fix the issues they commonly have, unfortunately, and it would take another few generations of a better lifestyle with careful breeding against and culling for bad behavioral traits to fix them. (I called it 'terminally high production' because it is at the expense of their health and unsustainable over even as little as a quarter of their potential lifespan, rather like some meat breeds.)

Any birds raised in such restrictive and unnatural environments for generations, selected for production with no consideration of (or culling for) vicious or neurotic behavioral traits, are far more likely to be vicious. This impacts most people who have leghorns because even those from backyard owners are often only one or a few generations removed from hatchery stock on average, and set behavioral traits take 5 to 7 generations to breed out. The genetic traits are another issue but just changing the diet can change many of them. On this note, I see you want to wait for greater knowledge to breed them, which is fair enough and wise in its own way, but I would bet you'd learn more and faster by jumping in sooner. The basics are simple and more learning should be added to experience rather than experience later being applied to 'book learning' as it doesn't work so well in reverse, for most people anyway. 'Book learning' is valuable but if you wait until you think you know the subject back to front and inside out, it can seriously impede the open-minded and objective understanding that is gained from unbiased hands-on experience, where one is observing what they are looking at, not analyzing it against a list of check boxes of criteria which may be arbitrary. It's all got its place but harder to apply experience to book learning than the other way around. Much of what you will learn won't be covered by most books and you will probably benefit from all the successes (and mistakes) of just getting into it and learning it by doing it. Once you learn the most basic 'basics', everything else is going to be subjective and what applies to anyone or everyone else may not apply to you and your flock.

Anyway, back on topic... In intensive environments like battery or very crowded barn situations, cannibalism is a positive trait that enables them to gain the raw oils and proteins all animals need, and as very high producing animals, they crave these even more keenly than a normal chook, since their output is greater. Their diets deliberately deny them this to ensure greater production, as industry studies have proven that when a hen can build up normal amounts of fat and protein, she is more likely to go broody or go into moult or take a seasonal break as her endocrine system is more balanced; that said, many of these breeds cannot process or utilize normal diets like a non intensive or mongrel chook can so supplying their needs doesn't change much. Leghorns have been bred for being the way they are, and their genetics shapes them strongly in this mould, no matter what you change about their environment or diet, so getting your Leghorns from someone whose birds have not seen the inside of a commercial hatchery in decades of generations might be very helpful for obtaining more socially balanced and more 'backyard suited' birds. It can also be helpful to give these HPLs more natural raw oils and proteins and fats. It may impact quantity of production somewhat negatively though. Cooked oils, fats, proteins etc are not as good for them (or us) as raw ones.

Commercial leghorns are bred to not moult if possible, nor go into seasonal laying breaks, nor go broody, in their first two years, to ensure maximum egg production before they are culled. Their stringent diet is part of the control ensuring this. But it leaves them constantly hungry for more fats and proteins and oils and this overall contributes to a less satisfied, more aggressive animal. Even in species where antisociality is the norm, complete nutrition causes peace to prevail in overcrowded situations, and lack of complete nutrition is a trigger for depopulation/dispersal instincts. When their needs are not met, they are constantly stressed about it, and it's worse in hens who have to produce more, making them much more likely to fight over perceived or real lack of food; even with full crops they stay in this nutrition-seeking mode, ready to fight to get what they need and have needed for so long. Some breeds can never have their needs met, they are incapable of utilizing a decent diet no matter what you put into them, and they remain desperate and aggressive due to that for their entire lifetimes. Puberty adds its own pressures, even in birds with little or no paternal/maternal instincts, as there is still the pecking order and the hormonal impulse even if there is no direct drive to claim territory, and adding hunger and social maladjustment to that is a bad mix.

Another problem is that most HPLs I've known have permanent broody patches on their breasts, but no broody behavior, which is strange and suggests their hormonal imbalance is severe, and they also grow proper spurs, suggesting they are imbalanced in a few 'directions' --- incidentally, all the best HPLs I've seen or owned, of various different breeds including Leghorns, have these two traits, and both of these traits (broody hormones and higher male hormones) are generally associated with heightened aggression levels and altered metabolism functions.

We've bred them to produce as much as possible on the poorest diet possible, and any species can turn dangerous to its own kind and others if it is maintained at a constant level of malnutrition, especially if it's been done for generations in that family line, which is actually what has happened to the average high production breed.

The average layer pellet commercial diets we feed them are labeled as 'complete nutrition' but in fact they only contain minimal and poor quality, often synthetic, survival rations designed to allow the animal to survive and produce for up to two years maximum, by which point it has exceeded the usual cull-by date. Malnutrition can take decades to kill and causes many diseases which a layperson may not readily recognize as deficiency diseases, and you can't put in later what never went into the animal in the first place so attempting to treat these birds later on is generally a futile waste of time. As with humans that have endured starvation from a young age, there is some permanent damage, and malnutrition easily masquerades as acceptable levels of health.

Aggression is heightened in animals not receiving everything they need but high production layers produce less if they are getting everything they need, because a system properly nourished is a system balanced and a balanced system does not overproduce recklessly at the expense of the general health of the organism.

A hen who cannibalizes is more likely to produce more, so indirectly this trait is selected for in those hatcheries who do not cull for one bird's damage to its fellows. In these intensive circumstances, bullying others also improves the dominant inmates' general environment by making more space and food available for the bully. These are some reasons why the best layer breeds are often noted for highly aggressive behavioral traits.

But it all depends on the breeders of the most recent generations, you can get terrible birds from people who give them good environments but simply choose bad birds to breed.

If only one of your leghorns is being a bully, separating her for a while, like a few days, to drop her in the social order then reintroducing her will possibly help, and the rest of the leghorns may be fine and not turn aggressive. If, however, what you're seeing isn't bullying but appears to be attempts to cannibalize, then culling is the only long term solution, not that I personally tolerate bullies either, but some manage. If she is trying to remove pieces, and it's not in the context of a fair fight and no direct hierarchy challenge precedes the attack, I would seriously reconsider keeping that one. She can end up costing you your other birds and no amount of eggs she lays are going to make up for that, in my view anyway. Even if you don't plan to breed yet, you should probably start critiquing them on breeder/non-breeder bases, as the birds you keep now will in future years be the ones you likely end up breeding from.

I personally am fairly Leghorn-averse because the few I have had experience with are excessively aggressive to other birds, very loudly and repetitively noisy, human-aggressive or sexually attracted to humans, antisocial, and neurotic, and these are strong traits that persist when you attempt to breed them out even through crossing with different breeds or mongrels. The leghorns I had were from different breeders and the similarities persisted despite that. Spacky leghorns are more common than calm ones. To me, the few extra eggs of Isabrowns, Leghorns etc are not worth the bother of dealing with their negative traits. (I'm just going to refer to Isabrowns, Leghorns etc as High Production Layers or HPLs because they are so similar in characteristics, dietary issues, weaknesses, etc).

The choice one has with those HPL breeds is often limited to greater quantity but poorer quality eggs produced on the commercial pellet diet, (thinner and larger shells, watery whites, plain or poor tasting yolks), or less quantity but higher quality eggs, on a better diet, (thicker but slightly smaller shells, thicker whites, and richly colored, thicker, cleaner tasting yolks). In which case why not keep slightly lower production hens who will be healthier and more productive for longer? That's what I ended up settling on anyway.

Instead of one High Production Layer breed hen, I'd much rather keep two mongrel hens who between them will lay well for over a decade, remain in good health, eat about the same amount as one HPL but produce more for years more than that HPL will live. I'll spend less on their total care as they're stronger immunologically, spend less time and resources managing the flock because they're socially balanced and peaceful, and the eggs are better quality too because the hens aren't running themselves down nonstop. Their quality of life is better too.

Once your Leghorns hit two years old the production often slumps dramatically, and may even stop, but they'll keep eating like normal because they're not as efficient as a hen who is genetically able to store normal amounts of fat, muscle, etc. Hens who brood are not burning as much fat as they are muscle, which is why normal hens who take seasonal laying breaks have tender and renewed flesh for longer, whereas HPLs have flesh as tough and rank as old roosters even when they're still young. The genetic influence is far reaching.

Some forum members in America have described American Leghorns as having a pattern of behavior that involves 'freaking out' followed by attacking others, often their feet. Pretty odd. But I'm in Australia and the Leghorns I've seen had a pattern of attacking from behind without warning, whether attacking other birds or humans, whereas every other breed of rooster or chook I've seen that was vicious didn't have that preference as a rule. Either way if you get birds from intensive hatchery environments, usually nobody is watching them closely for behavior; they are bred for production characteristics alone, so the hen who kills and cannibalizes her flockmates will pass on her genes if she happens to be a slightly better layer, and this has already happened for much of the duration of the breed's existence.

You may end up having to make a decision between good health (physical and psychological) and the best laying genetics as they are often mutually exclusive. I've bred great mongrel layers who matched Isa Browns and Leghorns, it's doable, but they did take seasonal breaks which I believe is healthy and vital to longevity, and personally I would happily put up with less eggs per bird for assured social harmony and longevity of each layer. Intensive layers suffer a decrease in total health in order to produce that extra amount of eggs and it translates into the egg quality being poorer, just like you don't get the best beef from the cow that never got enough intake of nutrients. There have been some truly great and healthy layer breeds but most high production hens you can get aren't like that, they are constantly hungry and inefficient and the pellets formulated in conjunction with these breeds are designed to not supply them with enough, otherwise they lay a few less eggs a year. They are kept deliberately balanced on a fine edge of desperation and are not designed to live long, and if you put them onto a better diet they will get healthier but lay less. You can't win with those sorts, lol, their genetics are biased against it, you can pick total health and longevity or total production per dollar spent, not both, at least in commercial breeds overall.

But if you work on your own strains or breeds you can develop a very decent compromise between the two. If you're sold on Leghorns, I don't doubt there are some great ones out there that are the exception to the rule, and best wishes with finding or breeding them.

They were getting much less flighty lately. But, are leghorns generally more aggressive and nasty toward each other than dual purpose like the NH? I think only one is acting up, but I have trouble telling them apart. And, might she just be going through a bad spell (stressed), because I never saw this behavior until the general unrest in the coop with the reintroduction?

It may indeed be stress, but not all chooks or even the majority of them react to stress by harming others, and I don't personally believe it's acceptable as a personality trait. If her reaction to stress is to attack and harm others, she's not worth it, as she is a liability not an asset. Life involves stresses on a semi-regular basis even in the most wonderful environments. Those that resort to violence for relief should not be tolerated for the sake of the others.

Her sons, for example, would quite possibly be likelier to respond to the 'stress' of you being around the flock by attacking you, even if you're not doing anything to upset the flock.

Unjustified lashing out is a serious issue and you can't predict where it will start or stop as it's not triggered by anything logical or manageable.

When I was first starting out with poultry, still culling out negative traits but having for the most part by then achieved a stable and decent breeding population, I found that even in an otherwise socially harmonious flock, that stress-attacker trait persisted for a few generations. Under free-ranging conditions they were fine. Waiting to be let out in the mornings, they were fine. Being unexpectedly caged for a day or two, however, some few were not fine and quickly went from complaining to assaulting others.

So I started testing every generation to see if it was present. Normally they were free-ranged every day, all day. To test, I'd randomly cage my birds for a whole day or two, every new generation I bred, after puberty when they'd settled into their hierarchies, to see which expressed their frustration in physical violence. I tested after puberty because this issue didn't show in chicks. The bad behaviors I have seen in chicks persisted into adulthood in all but the rarest few cases and there were accompanying other behavioral traits or genetic issues which led to those birds being culled anyway.

I always culled the hens who brutalized others due to mild frustration, because people seeking to buy well-behaved birds from me should not find that merely failing to let them free range for one day in their otherwise very stimulating life results in damages to others.

It's not pecking order reinforcement, it's not squabbling or fighting, it's when a hen or rooster (usually a hen) starts making cross noises and complaints about being caged, then within a few hours decides to savage her flockmates because she wants to free range and can't. Possibly in the case of non-commercial ancestral stock, it could be bred into them by humans relenting and letting them free range in an attempt to stop the nasty behavior, just like they can learn rapidly that making a ruckus may get the human to shower them with treats to stop the ruckus, in which case they will learn to make a ruckus simply to get treats, not because they are actually panicking or upset. I've found out the hard way how even the very first bird in a family line to express a new behavior can breed it true if they associated enough of a positive response with the exhibition of that behavior. I guess that'd just be how instincts develop in the first place, trial and error with quick rewards or punishment results genetically recorded and passed on.

It's not the alphas or best animals that do the worst things, either. That's one of the most interesting things I've ever found in negative behavioral traits, the genetically best animals almost as a rule have the least negative traits. For some reason sub-par animals almost always have them in spades. Just a generalization, not totally true across the board though, and a lot of things influence it.

Leghorns are often noted for their negative social traits but not all are like that, generally just the highest production ones. For better leghorns, you could try contacting someone on this forum who has no complaint with theirs. Some people have some better ones than average.

Some people who have no complaints simply have none because they are very un-involved in their flocks, they do the barest minimum and have no set plans in what sort of future flock they'd like, and if they find bullied birds, they usually cull the victim and do not address the bully issue. They have no problem with routine cannibalism and killings, they view it as normal. Everyone has a 'philosophy' of animal keeping so if theirs doesn't match yours you can expect to end up culling everything you bought from them, so it really pays to spend the time to find people who have already been breeding along lines you have decided your flock should remain within.

I'd highly recommend you have some in-depth talks with the breeders of your future breeding stock about what they consider normal, natural, acceptable, inevitable, socially and physically etc. Their problems become your problems, for years to come. Chooks aren't clean slates that get 'colored in' based on how you raise them, feed them, etc, they come carrying a LOT of data from their parents, grandparents etc and their environments, life experiences, etc. Each little chick comes preloaded, lol.

If you have children and pets or want an integrated and harmonious farm, you may want to spend the extra time to make sure your birds are as stable as possible, which includes selecting against violence. Or you can just permanently cage them all as a rule, not an exception, if that works better for you, so you can separate the worst from the least aggressive.

The trait towards expressing violence is not strictly triggered by any single thing, it can change and express differently for different 'reasons'.

It's the willingness to do violence that is actually what you select against, no matter how it shows itself or why.

The actual 'why' is not as simple as the situation may suggest, nor is it as important as the fact that they are willing to resort to violence as a response to a given situation which mostly does not even call for it. All excessive violence, meaning beyond normal/within reason like pecking order or defensive behaviors, stems from a deeply rooted imbalance in the animal's mental processes, it's not something that healthy birds ever express no matter the 'reason'. It's not a normal function of a balanced bird, not inherent in all of them, and it's very strongly heritable even in total absence of the triggers the parents acted in response to. It's the tip of the iceberg, indicative of worse/more below the surface, as there is prolonged buildup in incorrect or negative mental traits before it ever overflows into violence. A mindset/patterns of instinct that lead to abnormal violence is representative of a social/ behavioral system awry, it's not a projection of a normal mindset, which means even a normal acting bird from violent parents or one violent parent, should be considered abnormal until a good few generations of 'clean' birds have been bred from it and have not showed the same behaviors. Unless proven otherwise, it's more likely than not to be carrying on the warped instincts.

You may want to use something to identify which bird, or which birds, are attacking. Some use nail-polish on their beaks or claws, not that I'd recommend it but there's various options which would do the job. If it's a common trait among them you would benefit from nipping it in the bud. If it's just one that may be easier to manage, though culling is generally the only surefire way to manage it permanently.

If you do want to cull her eventually, if all else fails, one way you can do that is to sell or give her to someone who has a flock of older hens who are able and likely to defend themselves from a little upstart who savages them. But, there is some chance this is transient behavior, though even that tends to show up in offspring for a few generations as the underlying cause remains. You may benefit from experimenting with her, trying to train her out of it or breed it out, if you're curious as to heritability or trainability. It's all useful knowledge but there are of course risks inherent in keeping a nasty animal in order to see if it can be 'fixed'.

Best wishes, I hope my rather long post made sense.

 

[enola]

Today I observed a new behavior that I don't know what to make of.  One of my NH pullets (pretty sure, its a pullet) spends all her time lightly pecking food from the beaks of the others when they get their wet mash treat.  The other birds don't seem upset and sometimes peck her beak back, and she doesn't pick on any one bird, but she seems obsessed with this beak pecking, at least when their is mash. I picked her up (which I rarely do, so it kind of surprised her) and within a minute of putting her back down, she was at it again, but seemed to stop when I took the wet food away.  Is this an aggressive, recessive or neurotic behavior?

This act is a form of grooming - a very natural act in the chicken world.

 

[debp]

This is an amazing answer; very, very helpful at this stage for me. I think I will separate the leghorn pullet, as she is a real bully. When I've picked her up, I don't notice any of the others doing the nasty stuff and the room was calmer.
One of my problems at this stage, is I don't know what normal hierarchy behavior looks like. I have some ideas, but...
For example, my NH roos (they are now 5 1/2 weeks) just went from buddies to aggression. The biggest, most developed roo is a gentle giant. He was exhibiting dominance until today. He very gently held his position, never chasing or bullying. Something happened today, as he is now terrified of at least one of the other NH roos, and maybe 2 of them. He does not challenge that other rooster, but it chases him if he is anywhere near - he runs in terror. I don't notice the same calm, watchful behavior in this new top rooster that I saw in the deposed one. If I had to choose between these 2 roosters, I would tend to go for the still larger, but now deposed roo, as he shows no meaness, but until today, was regal. Would that be a mistake? I didn't think I would have these hierarchy problems at this age. I'm wondering when I'm going to have to start butchering the excess roosters - they won't be ready for eating for some time yet.

 

[chooks4life]

This is an amazing answer; very, very helpful at this stage for me. I think I will separate the leghorn pullet, as she is a real bully. When I've picked her up, I don't notice any of the others doing the nasty stuff and the room was calmer.

Good to hear. Maybe it's just the one odd hen who is nasty.

One of my problems at this stage, is I don't know what normal hierarchy behavior looks like. I have some ideas, but...

Well, only experience will help you there, but really there are two main forms of normal.

There is ancestral/ancient normal: when a rooster or a hen meets a strange adult of their kind, they fight and the loser leaves the winner's territory. In rare cases where they are very closely matched and determined there will be a fight to the death.

Very few chickens you can get, short of actual Jungle Fowl, are likely to show this absolute/exclusive territorial dominance, and even the captive-bred Jungle Fowl you can get are much more tolerant than that example, on average. For the sake of keeping them as livestock tolerance has been bred into them from very early on in their domestication, at least in most breeds, barring some like Games which are bred to fight. But you can even get tolerant Gamefowl. Most of everything about any breed's traits depends on the last few breeders who bred the family line you got some of.

The other normal, modern/domestic normal, is divided between basically birds descended from free range or similar operations and birds descended from very cloistered ones, producing two normals.

The first is more likely to be tolerant and the second is notorious for its behavioral faults, and there's been much mixing of the results of the two, breeding cage bred birds (and their faults) into free range bred birds, and vice versa, especially since so many buy birds from cage environments to keep either free range or under less restricted environments than their recent ancestors came from.

'Normal' varies wildly because what people keep and breed becomes normal to whatever family line has been bred to strongly show that type of 'normal', so the range of individuals among poultry and the range of individual and differing beliefs among poultry keepers means there are many types of normal, and your best bet is to pick the normal that suits you and preserve it through maintaining it and not preserving deviations from that normal. My ideal normal is nonviolent and the animals have quality of life. Some peoples' ideal normal is very violent and kill-or-be-killed, and they are forced to separate their animals to keep any semblance of a functioning breeding flock alive.

Really, normal is whatever you define it as; I define it along the lines of 'sustainable', 'healthy', 'functional', etc. It has to work for them and for me. A bully or killer only works for itself. My idea of normal means that once I've removed the faulty/terminal issues, i.e. killers, the rest can continue on and self-replicate its stable normality without constant external maintenance of that norm, since something has to continue on to be established as a norm, and if you allow killers free reign to decimate the flock it's hardly establishing a long-term norm. Loose and fluid definitions, I know, lol. Anyway, once I culled out the bullies for a few generations the calm and peaceful normal that had been established no longer required culling to be preserved; it was self-sustaining. They didn't breed more bullies because I'd culled the birds with those traits out, not bred them. From then onwards, I only culled for things like weaker genetics, unwanted type or coloration, lower production, etc, because the initial faults I culled out remained gone. Interestingly, strange birds I brought into the flock after that point just seemed to observe the current situation while in their week of caged location-bonding, and after they were introduced to free range among the flock they would obey the law of the land, sort of thing, no matter how they'd been getting along back at their last place.

My idea of normal/healthy interactions are generally the behaviors naturally found in domestic birds raised for a few generations free ranging, reared by their mothers, with their fathers around and mixed age/gender/genetics flock members present. That sort of social cohesion where they can all get along without stress or damage is my ideal normal. There are no killers or bullies.

Under this concept of normal, fights lasting more than a few minutes are rare, as are fights that draw blood or result in an injury, since basically most of these extremities occur due to communication breakdown or mental fault, which is pretty inherent in cage-breds but not in free-range bred birds raised in this social and familial unit or community. This isn't to say free range birds can't have some strong disagreements, they can argue just like we can. But the outright violence is absent even when they strongly disagree and can no longer tolerate one another. They are civil about it.

When 'normal' roosters like these fight, they do not use their spurs. They can kick without slashing or stabbing, and normally, in my flock anyway, that's what they do. I've never had a single rooster with a spur wound. (I have had some hens get accidentally scratched by clumsy mates though, but no fatalities). They can pack enough power into their kicks to determine who is stronger, they don't need to do actual harm to sort out the pecking order.

Babies should have a great time playfighting, without harm, like baby animals generally do, and by the time they hit puberty they are socially adjusted and healthy and well rehearsed in their place, everyone else's place, and how to challenge or avoid challenge.

Chooks have violence-averse or placating/submissive body language too, designed to avoid conflict where possible, like ducking the head while raising/spreading the wings slightly, and making pretend-panicked movements out of the path of a superior; only a bully will assault a bird so obviously showing its submission. It's a stylized cringe, really, I'd bet you've seen it. They often make a slightly slowed-down 'flapping' motion, like a slow-motion panic dodge out of the oncoming superior's path. If you haven't seen it yet, you will most likely see it sometime in future.

For example, my NH roos (they are now 5 1/2 weeks) just went from buddies to aggression. The biggest, most developed roo is a gentle giant. He was exhibiting dominance until today. He very gently held his position, never chasing or bullying. Something happened today, as he is now terrified of at least one of the other NH roos, and maybe 2 of them. He does not challenge that other rooster, but it chases him if he is anywhere near - he runs in terror.

Sounds like the biggest boy is a good rooster to start your chicken-keeping experience with, and it also sounds like he got a serious flogging that persisted after he'd already signaled submission. If he's not offering challenges but the other bird chases him, then that bird is overly aggressive and territorial and can end up dictating your breeding plans and farmyard politics if you let him. This sort of chasing-off habit can settle down but it's rather strong for such a young one and I personally don't allow it. Actually I've never seen it in one as young as yours.

Some good reasons to keep many males is so you can eat the lower-quality ones, and still have sufficient unrelated males to be able to breed numerous different female lines without inbreeding. It depends on what you want to do with them. But whatever your reasons, for the sake of peace I would recommend you never have less than two males, as even males raised with other males can become suddenly intolerant within days of finding themselves a solo rooster.

If you want to keep them for meat as well as breeding, and have them peaceful and at peak health, keeping them all separately caged is not an option, and neither is keeping autocrats, lol. If you separate them you provide conditions to keep breeding intolerance. They need experience to achieve and retain tolerance or over time they lose ability to be socially accepting of others, simply because they don't have to deal with others. Keeping only one male may seem like an easier way out but it will slow your breeding plan up for the duration of his life with you. He will also breed on that aggressiveness so you'll be stuck obeying his 'rules' long after he's gone because his sons are very likely to be just as intolerant. No male is that good, I reckon; the only solo breeder I would keep would be solo because he'd be in a cage, not because I'd get rid of the others to suit him, and he'd have to be pretty darn special to be worth that extra effort, lol!

I'm pretty constantly aware of their lifespans, their prime years, how little time you actually have to make the very best matches for each male and female, how long it will take before you can be sure they were indeed the best matches, and then there's the potential random strike of illness, accident, etc, which can undo all your work or take away a great breeder before you achieved their full potential. I would hate to waste my best hens' breeding lives on the wrong males. For these reasons I would recommend you show no patience with a sub par male trying to take over your operation, you can't get back the time they can waste.

I don't notice the same calm, watchful behavior in this new top rooster that I saw in the deposed one. If I had to choose between these 2 roosters, I would tend to go for the still larger, but now deposed roo, as he shows no meaness, but until today, was regal. Would that be a mistake?

No, it wouldn't be a mistake, by the sounds of it he's most likely the best roo for your flock. In the wild he might not be the winner, but they're not in the wild, they're thousands of years removed from it, and what suits the wild does not suit domesticity.

Even in the wild the most balanced animals can be savaged out of their dominant roles by berserker animals which are almost always lower-grade genetically, but so uninhibitedly vicious that it borders on insanity. Animals fear mental imbalance in one another as it makes the insane one unlikely to relent when submission is shown, unlikely to respond to normal body language, and unlikely to be a fair opponent. Imbalance also suggests illness, and that desperate recklessness is something all animals would rather avoid unless it's in the form of easy prey. It's unpredictable and they are afraid of that. Better genetic-quality animals will yield the fight to such an opponent, so they can escape with their lives.

That excessive violence the other roo is showing is probably present now because it's something people have selected for in otherwise calmer stock, for a few main reasons: cockfighting, and transference of old style human sexist ideals onto male animals, i.e. the commonly repeated notions of something being 'wrong' with peaceful males. Many still think a non-aggressive male is somehow infertile and a male's fertility is somehow proven and gauged by the extent of his violent tendencies; pretty outdated ideals but plenty of people still believe them, so they select for those traits, making that their version of normal.

If he acts like a rooster and has the development of one, he's very likely to be fertile as that behavior and development itself proves he has the right sort of hormones going around in the right dosage. If he acts like a chick, he may have failed to reach puberty, it does happen; but then he won't show adult development. If he's hyper-aggressive, it doesn't prove he's more fertile, in fact he can be the world's most aggressive bird and still be infertile.

Since your deposed boy is more developed, he is healthier, and by far the most likely to be the better breeder.

In recent studies on cattle, it's been found that excessive aggression is actually linked to lower fertility, and this also holds true in my experience with other species. One theory is that it's due to testosterone circulating the system instead of being utilized correctly. I've spent most of my life keeping, studying, and breeding different species, and hyper-aggressive males are lower fertility in my experience than the calmer males, leading me to believe this hyper-aggression is actually the breeding strategy/coping mechanism of the sub-par male. Females do it too.

When you study wild animals, you find the best males and females produce the best males and females in turn, and it generally skips back and forth between genders, keeping the 'alpha'/genetic superiority in the family line: i.e. the best mare/cow/hind produces the best stallion/bull/stag, and good but not great daughters. These great sons of these alpha females will produce good sons but not great ones, but they will produce the best mare/cow/hind in turn, and so it goes. Fascinating and not well explained but well documented throughout history, in various countries. For example the Arabs used this old knowledge to establish Arabian horses as one of the finest breeds and English farmers used to use the same principle on cattle. Alpha females make alpha males and alpha males make alpha females and so forth down the line. Nowadays there's very good money in selling all the sons of a great bull or stallion, so it's not a popular belief, but plenty of the best horsebreeders, cattlebreeders etc still know this and apply it with success.

Your more developed male would have come from a good hen, and the less developed male from a lower grade hen, I'd bet money on it, lol. What made the family line lower grade is fairly irrelevant, it's quite likely just fluke like an injury or illness sustained in a young chick which set it back in development so it never caught up with its siblings and produced less healthy offspring when it was an adult, who in turn produced less healthy offspring because they started off on a 'hind foot' so to speak.

Even one day's worth of illness can set a chick back permanently compared to its siblings, but by the same token most who get sicker than others have weaker genetics in the first place, for whatever reason.

It can be happenstance like a really large dose of bacteria being consumed by one chick and not the others, or a dual issue like getting chilled and sick whereas its siblings only got sick, or only got chilled.

I had one family line of hens which were set back terribly by their founding mother having eaten something that made her ill. She looked fine, but mentally was not stable. The next generations from her were so poor physically, that I eventually eradicated the family line from the flock. Being more aggressive is more common in birds like this, and may help birds like this and like your less developed, more aggressive male secure better resources like food, and a better mate, which over generations could help his family line rise above its current social/genetic level.

But in the meantime it doesn't make him a good flock member, nor his offspring, nor theirs... It'd be a long process towards becoming better that would take many generations before they would lose the aggression and they might even never get there. There's a few reasons aggression can show up in farmyard animals even if they're not cage-bred but it's not worth keeping either way.

None of the reasons are good. Some are tolerable like extreme shortage of food in the middle of a drought, which can drive otherwise peaceful animals into distress which may lead to increased violence. But overall the bulk of all reasons for excessive violence are simply not good enough reasons.

Nat Geo mag did an article on female mate selection a while back and found that no matter what a red deer stag does in his lifetime his dominance is predetermined by his mother's status, and this predetermines what sort of hinds will mate with him. Alpha hinds do not choose Beta stags no matter how many battles they fight. Also wrens who practice polygamy were discovered to be having extramarital affairs, where the 'wives' sneaked out of the 'husband's' territory at dusk and twilight to mate with other males who didn't hold territory. You can also see that in horses etc, if a female does not like the resident dominant male she will sneak off to find one she does, and since dominance comes through the opposite gender, this indicates the males hyper-aggressively holding territory or trying to control harems aren't necessarily the genetically best males.

I have yet to see a great male be excessively violent. I'm judging them by their offspring and general health, here, not anything else. I used to be open to the idea that it was normal and possibly even 'healthy' for a rooster to savage and kill other roos, since that was the general belief everyone agreed on, but experience has not upheld that idea, in fact it quickly convinced me otherwise. There were some males I thought were great, back when I first started, but they were more violent than the others, and sure enough the proof was in their offspring, which were fewer and of poorer quality than the less aggressive males.

Our understanding of animal breeding and mate selection is in its infancy, still emerging from the rampant anthropomorphizing of early studies where the dominant human roles were 'imprinted' onto animals and assumed to be correct, and taught as correct despite lack of proof or presence of conflicting proof. Either way we know there is a variation on what's normal in every species. My chooks would randomly decide to be monogamous, polygamous, polyandrous, or completely polyamorous, and I still don't know why. Some would exhibit these different traits at different times.

The lowest grade females are not fussy about their mates, usually, and the highest grade males aren't too interested in them and may even refuse to mate with them. The more high grade females a male associates with, the more fussy he gets, until he won't even look at a lower grade female. But the highest grade females of the majority of species are very fussy about who they mate with and males of all grades will go to extra lengths to secure them as a mate.

There are plenty of scientific studies showing that female mate selection is more important than male mate selection, and recently it was found that hens have sperm selection capacities and physiological functions to rid themselves of sperm from males they don't like, and select which sperm lives or dies before it reaches the egg/s. Most female animals have something similar, of varying levels of efficiency, but the reasons for the choices made is not clear.

This explains a phenomenon I've often noticed in my own flock, particularly when I've tried to match males and females who disliked one another; also it explains the case of hens who 'courtesy-mate' to get a persistent male to leave them alone, but never end up being mother to his offspring despite being fertile while mating. They could mate with a male they dislike and in the next few moments or days mate with one they did, and no matter what, they never bred the male they didn't like. All chicks were always from their choice of male. I thought perhaps they don't line up their reproductive tract, since the cloaca is both reproductive and eliminatory, or perhaps the males they don't like, they don't like because something about them shows they are weaker genetically, i.e. perhaps they have slower or more deformed sperm so the males they do like are able to still wind up being the fathers... But sperm selection makes sense where these theories were not able to cover all contingencies.

Allowing and observing free choice of mates in chickens leads to some very interesting findings. I would also bet money on the likelihood of your more aggressive male, if you kept him, only attracting and keeping lower grade/unhealthier/more aggressive or neurotic females, whereas your deposed male would attract and keep higher grade/healthier and calmer females. Since they're young they will take a while to come to this social stratification but it does eventually end up there, the more experience they have the more perceptive and exclusive they become.

It took a generation or two for my males to stop pursuing females who rejected them, and learn to just do their thing around the yard and accept whatever females chose them. You'd see groups of bonded males and females strolling about like couples in the park, each minding their own, often with chicks in tow, with some singles also doing their own thing. Females were free to come and go from each rooster as they chose and the boys didn't fight over it even if they were quite attached to that hen. None of this 'I own all the females!' thing the hyper-aggressive males do. The males can brush past one another without any umbrage taken.

Since the best males and females tend to pair off and attempt to avoid breeding with weaker males and females, I think that excessive aggression is the main way a sub-par male can break free of his lower grade predetermined mate selection and possibly isolate a higher grade female from the higher grade males in order to upgrade his genetic line. If he fights like he's crazy, a more rational male is more likely to back off, and while the females do prefer better mates in most cases they eventually settle for whatever is around. After all male turnover is high, chances are he won't be around long, makes no sense for them to waste a breeding season. Some will, though, if they dislike the rooster enough.

Other animals are well aware of which hen and which rooster are more physically, mentally, physiologically sound than them, and mostly they naturally defer to them, which is why you end up with dominant animals who don't have to resort to violence to attain and retain dominance.

They are basically born into the roles and unless they encounter a serious setback they will remain there.

But there is always that extra aggressive male or female who takes dominance by being so vicious, and it almost always involves 'breaking the rules' --- i.e. when the fight should end, and they should submit or accept the other's submission, they continue to attack.

I didn't think I would have these hierarchy problems at this age. I'm wondering when I'm going to have to start butchering the excess roosters - they won't be ready for eating for some time yet.

The good thing about raising them together is that from about a week old they were already aware of their place in the hierarchy, and are practicing how to get along and stirring social instincts that may have been made dormant by their parents being unable to act on them. Normally the first-hatched/oldest chick is dominant to start with as they are mobile and more experienced, and sometimes this translates into a huge advantage like being able to steal insects or other food from younger siblings because they're slightly less developed.

Their baby battles are good fun and practice but they're not meaningless. They sorted out who was boss back when they were babies, but a follow up battle around puberty is very normal.

About when they'll be ready to eat... Well, I breed mixed mongrels with a lot of bantam in them, full size though, because that way they are quick-growing and well fleshed even as six-week-olds, able to be culled at that age too. Generally I wait until they're at least 6 months so there is more nutrient buildup in their body but sometimes it's convenient to cull sooner. I personally found 'fattening' to be a false economy. They reach the ideal state of health and weight just roaming free and enjoying life, confining them to a cage with a fattening diet didn't do anything good for them or us.

Best wishes and sorry again for the long post. No piece of information is an island, I guess... I know some of my beliefs are strange and unconventional, but there isn't much standard about chickens. They vary to an incredible degree. Your experiences will be unique in some areas and I look forward to hearing about them in future.