Can I dull beak and spurs to prevent rooster injuries?

[026TB4U]

Hi all,

Before I ask my question, culling is not an option.

I have a flock of 14 hens and have too many (8) roosters. They get along for the most part but occasionally they will fight but get over it.

The only issue I have with them working it out are eye injuries. I've had 2 get eye injuries. One is partially blind and the other is fully blind.

Can I grind down (Dremel) beaks and spurs to make them blunt? Not sure what causes the damage in a fight. Would this prevent eye damage and other injuries?

I apologize if this is a stupid question but I'm fairly new to this and any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Isadora]

Is rehoming some of your boys an option? That's an awful lot of roosters for only 14 hens.
And yes, trimming the spurs could help prevent injury, but eye injuries can happen with a blow from a wing, or really anything. They're pretty delicate.

 

[026TB4U]

We have tried rehoming but no luck but we will continue to try.

The fights do get pretty bloody so I was thinking blunt tips will do less damage then sharp tips.

 

[nuthatched]

Can you separate the rooster away from the hens in their own bachelor flock? You can try the hot potato method and remove the spurs. It's very unlikely that you'll rehome more than 3 of them.

 

[Mrs. K]

They don't call it cock fighting for nothing.

How old are your hens, and is this your first flock? This is apt to get much worse. I imagine your hens are living lives in extreme tension unless you have the roosters in a bachelor flock.

Personally, I do not see the difference of having cockfights for money, verses having cockfights so they can all live. I don't enjoy my birds with this tension and behavior. I solve for peace in the flock. IMO you need to think and manage the flock, not individual birds. Not all birds will fit or work in a flock. Sometimes you will get a hen that does not work either.

I do not think that the trimming of the beaks and spurs will be a real solution. A bachelor flock might work for some of them. A lot depends on how much space you have. Roosters take more space than hens in my opinion.

If you have multiple acres, and can set it up so that each rooster has its own area with hens, some people have had that work.

If everyone is in one pen, the odds of this getting better are very poor. Fighting tends to escalate, as in the first fights are more exploratory. If they keep fighting, they tend to get worse and worse, and can lead to a death of one or both birds.


Mrs K

 

[aart]

Short answer....NO!
Read @Mrs. K's advice.

 

[NatJ]

The only issue I have with them working it out are eye injuries. I've had 2 get eye injuries. One is partially blind and the other is fully blind.

Can I grind down (Dremel) beaks and spurs to make them blunt? Not sure what causes the damage in a fight. Would this prevent eye damage and other injuries?

Blunting the spurs is fairly common. I'm not sure whether it would work well with beaks or not. Chickens use their beaks to preen feathers and pick up food, so changing the shape of the beak might cause problems for the chicken.

Eyes are pretty delicate, so I think a blunt beak or a blunt spur would still cause trouble.

Beaks and spurs also grow longer, and get sharper, over time. So dremeling them to make them blunt would have to be done repeatedly, probably every few weeks for the beaks and every few months for the spurs, for each rooster.

As long as you don't go too deep, I don't think you will cause any harm, so you could try it and see if it helps.

...culling is not an option.... too many (8) roosters. They get along for the most part but occasionally they will fight but get over it.

More space might help.

Places to get out of each other's sight might help-- even things like boards or hay bales in their run, and perches to sit on, can let them avoid each other more often. Some injuries might come when the higher ranking rooster is "reminding" a lower one to stay out of his personal space. More space, and more objects to go behind, can make it easier for them to stay out of each other's personal space. (Of course this will not prevent battles over who is the top rooster. It will just make it easier for roosters who do NOT want to fight to get away.)

Some people keep roosters in a "bachelor flock," a group of just roosters with no hens. Of course that protects the hens from too much mating, but it supposedly causes the roosters to fight less often because there are no hens for them to fight over. I have no personal experience with this, but it might be worth considering.

Of course housing the roosters individually would keep them from hurting each other, but living alone is also not good for chickens, so I don't know if that would be better or worse than the current situation.

I've had 2 get eye injuries. One is partially blind and the other is fully blind.

If those ones are getting picked on, you might make a separate pen specifically for them, to protect them from getting hurt any more.