Can you have a lot of roosters in one pen?

[Alexander2000]

Thank you!!!

 

[chickengeorgeto]

So a few months ago my niece hatched some eggs at school and was given about 13 baby chicks. The bad thing is half of them are roos.... so we are planning on putting them all together in one pen. Will they kill each other or will they just establish who's Alpha and leave each other alone?

It's common practice to put all the cockerels in a single grow out pen. No pullets allowed. Peace reigns, until it doesn't....

The further away your young cockerels are from temptation (the ladies) the easier and more peaceable will be their separation. It is also a good idea to include a high ranking mature rooster or adult cockbird in your bachelor pen. This birds purpose is to knock the snot out of any upstart cockerel who tries to make trouble.

 

[Alexander2000]

I heard 1 rooster for 6-10 chickens but no one will know the exact amount.

 

[cmom]

For breeding purposes the standard is 1 male to no more than 10 females for fertility. You can put as many females as you want with a male but the more females if you are planning on hatching eggs the more infertile eggs you will have and usually the male will have favorite females.

 

[cmom]

I separate my youngsters when the males are around 4 months old. I don't put an older male in with the youngsters because for me it has caused problems. The younger males will figure out their own pecking order and there may be one that will get picked on by the others. I will remove the one being picked on.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

I heard 1 rooster for 6-10 chickens but no one will know the exact amount.

Mark Twain wrote a lovely article about human sexuality and compared some men in this article to an easy going Galapagos terrapin and other men to a ranty billy goat. Stating that no nanny goat was safe from sexual assault even if there was a 10 rail high split rail fence separating then.

Well roosters to a large degree are in the same boat as Twain's terrapin or billy goat. Straight combed roosters by-and-large are the billy goats of the chicken world while so called Asiatic strains like Asils etc mature slower sexually.

 

[centrarchid]

I am running a bunch of American Dominique cockerels through a couple of bachelor pads. Damage related to fighting is minimal. Many are being considered for use in show or sold for the same purpose. Once they start coming into adult feathers around 8 months of age, the best will be moved to single pens to keep feathers in top shape. The balance will be kept as backup where light damage is acceptable but often not realized. Making certain roosting space is adequate is first concern when trying to keep everyone in good feather. Sometime more is better in the bachelor setups, more roosters.

 

[lazy gardener]

For breeding purposes the standard is 1 male to no more than 10 females for fertility. You can put as many females as you want with a male but the more females if you are planning on hatching eggs the more infertile eggs you will have and usually the male will have favorite females.

This is an often quoted ratio for commercial breeding purposes. However, for the back yard flock, IMO one roo will easily provide enough fertility no matter how many hens. My roo easily covers up to 24 hens with almost 100% fertility rate. If the flock is larger than that, it would be a simple matter to put the roo with the best hens, and collect those eggs for hatching.

 

[Ridgerunner]

This is an often quoted ratio for commercial breeding purposes. However, for the back yard flock, IMO one roo will easily provide enough fertility no matter how many hens. My roo easily covers up to 24 hens with almost 100% fertility rate. If the flock is larger than that, it would be a simple matter to put the roo with the best hens, and collect those eggs for hatching.

That was my experience growing up. Dad had a flock of one rooster and 25 to 30 hens. Fertility was real close to 100%.

 

[H.R. Cluck-N-Stuff]

Any experience with having the established head is the flock of a bachelor pad beyond a turkey? We've hatched a heritage palm turkey and he's coming to need housing of his own once he reaches maturity. I'm currently thinking of building an additional coop to the farm for the young roos till butcher age because I need to take the stress off the females in the current coops in the future when we purchase our chicks, by removing the majority of the roosters as they age up and putting then in a bachelor pad.

Currently, we keep the turkeys parents in a coop with a mix of barred rock and Rhode islands and they get along, so I'm wondering if having a turkey as they dominant "rooster" would affect the bachelor pad.

Does anyone have any success stories with rooster rescues, how are those set up? What of enclosures do they use to keep multiple roosters happily/ safely? I have a lot of people who try to surrender their roosters to me and so far my option has been the far corners of 3 1/2 acres.. I'm out of corners.