chicken isolation

[Rick589]

A quick question. If it were you would you isolate an offending chicken or the offended chicken from the flock? The offender is a young roo and the offended is one of our older hens. Culling is not an option for me and the roo will most likely end up at our area livestock auction but in the interim I curious of what others would do.

 

[azygous]

How old is this hen? If she is past laying, she will not be receptive to mating. I've seen some very awful injuries when a young cockerel forces himself on a non-receptive hen. By all means remove this cockerel from the general population.

In all other instances of bullying, I recommend treating the victim. https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/chicken-bully-chicken-victim-a-two-sided-issue.73923/

 

[Rick589]

How old is this hen? If she is past laying, she will not be receptive to mating. I've seen some very awful injuries when a young cockerel forces himself on a non-receptive hen. By all means remove this cockerel from the general population.

In all other instances of bullying, I recommend treating the victim. https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/chicken-bully-chicken-victim-a-two-sided-issue.73923/

Yeah, I guess I should’ve supplied some backstory to my post. The hen in question is about 1-1/2 years old and has three ‘sisters’ and one ‘brother’ of the same age. We had two of our hens go broody virtually back to back and we allowed them to hatch out and as a result we ended up with 10 chickens four being roos. Now we realize the ration isn’t good but we wanted to allow the cockerels a chance to see just how their personalities will develop with any problems boys going to auction. We started our involvement with chickens we had 6 (our offended hen, her three sisters, and two boys)in total. One of the boys was eventually taken to auction but prior to that the hens were beaten up between the two boys and were pretty much featherless of their backs. Once the one boy was removed and prior to the additional three roos via the broody’s all of the hens regained their feathers except this hen in question. We currently have four roos (our original rooster of about 1-1/2 years, and our three new boys) and 6 hens. The older of the ‘new’ roos (about 5 months old) has a real ‘taste’ as it were for this one hen which is making her skittish a bit and I believe is aggravating her attempts to re-feather. So, up until we are able to re-home via auction this young roo I was curious as to whether the hen or the roo should be isolated. Let me add that I have two coops, our original and our newly converted shed. The original was closed off to get the flock used to the new coop but I recently reopened it to allow more options for the chickens. This offended hen has taken to returning to the old coop for the night. She is in there by herself overnight but does return to join the flock during the day. We provide supervised free ranging for them and monitor and protect her from any advances from this young roo.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

Since the hen is an established member of the flock, and the cockerel is on probation, so to speak, I’d isolate him.

Otherwise you will have to reintegrate the hen, who will probably have lost her position in the flock.

 

[azygous]

You do have your hands full with these cockerels. There is no law that says cockerels must have full access to hens. They can be kept separate from the hens without any chicken being deprived of well being. As long as there are no hens in with them, cockerels usually get along without much fighting.

If you don't realize it, a hen gives permission to be mated. It may appear that a rooster or cockerel is overpowering a hen, but that is not happening. In the split second in which mating occurs, the hen squats, signalling her receptiveness. It happens so quickly, we don't notice that he's the one taking cues from the hen, not the other way around.

In deciding which cockerels to keep for breeding, watch very carefully for this receptiveness on the part of the hens. Any cockerel that succeeds in mating only after a flamboyant chase and a lot of squawking and commotion, is not good rooster material.

 

[Ridgerunner]

A quick question. If it were you would you isolate an offending chicken or the offended chicken from the flock? The offender is a young roo and the offended is one of our older hens. Culling is not an option for me and the roo will most likely end up at our area livestock auction but in the interim I curious of what others would do.

I would like to know what the offense is, more about flock dynamics, and what your plans for the flock are before I made a decision. If you are sure you are taking that young cockerel to auction it is probably best to isolate him. If you are getting rid of him, I'd do it sooner rather than later.

I see you posted further information. If you isolate the hen from your flock you could create integration issues when trying to put her back in later. Do not separate her if you can avoid it.

Consider your cockerels as going from middle school to high school, you can expect more drama as they age. You are still a long way form them becoming adults.

Some people are able to keep multiple males with just a few females but that often does not work well. Good luck!