Cock fights

[GamingGopher]

So my roos have all of a sudden have started to fight and they are getting hurt What do I do?? I can't really separate them. Is there anything I can do to stop them?? Thanks

 

[LaFleche]

So my roos have all of a sudden have started to fight and they are getting hurt What do I do?? I can't really separate them. Is there anything I can do to stop them?? Thanks

How old are they?
How many of them?
How much space do they have in the coop?
What breeds are they?
Do they free range?
Are there any hens in sight or earshot of the fighting males?

 

[Mrs. K]

You really have to have a plan B and C... Generally speaking when they start fighting, sometimes they work it out. Sometimes they quit and heal up only to fight again, and sometimes they will fight to death.

"Roosters are where the romance of keeping chickens meets reality." AArt

You can separate them, and they will probably never be friends again. You can re-home one, sometimes other people need a rooster. Or you can cull a bird and make soup.

IMO you should not leave them together until one of them kills the other. They don't call it cock fighting for nothing.

Wishing they would just be nice really doesn't work, and we know, cause most of us have tried it.

Mrs K

 

[The Moonshiner]

So my roos have all of a sudden have started to fight and they are getting hurt What do I do?? I can't really separate them. Is there anything I can do to stop them?? Thanks

If you can't seperate them then no there isn't anything you can do to make them stop.

 

[Shadrach]

So my roos have all of a sudden have started to fight and they are getting hurt What do I do?? I can't really separate them. Is there anything I can do to stop them?? Thanks

No is the short answer. As long as they can get at each other they'll fight.
Most roosters will have a face saving scrap. Usually one backs down and life rolls on for a bit. It's the getting hurt part of your post that concerns me.
What do you mean exactly by getting hurt.
Bleeding combs and wattles for example are minor battle wounds for roosters in general. Spur holes in the body are not. So if I see a rooster with a torn comb for example I apply a bit of disninfectant and let it heal. It was a full time jobe with six roosters. Someone had a scrap every day.

Then there are grudge fights. Once one has watched roosters for a while one learns to tell the difference. It usually escalates when neither will back down and with these fights one may left with a difficult decision; if you let them fight it's quitepossible one may maim or even kill the other. The rooster you remove can probably never go back to the group. One may be lucky and find someone who will take a cockerel or rooster but I would rather eat them myself knowing they had a good, albeit short life than to entrust the roosters welfare to someone I don't know. Basically it's a dead male either way.

What to do is largely dependant on the keeping circumstances and what you are able to do.
One option is to house and run them seperately.
Another option is to range them from dawn to dusk and have seperate coops and preferably their own hens; two or three hens each should be fine.
You need an acre or more to give the free range option the best chance.

 

[Mrs. K]

Space has a huge issue here. When giving advice, we tend to give it from the point of view of our own set up. Truthfully that varies from a darling and worthless prefab chicken coop, to a modest set up for 10-12 hens to a larger, more serious set up for 30-40 and a set up over acres. Or somewhere in-between.

But this is true in all situations, the less space you have, the more problems you are like to have. If the roosters that are fighting, have a way to back out, retreat a distance away from a rival, and most importantly get out of sight, this can really help. It is not 100%, really nothing with roosters is.

A lot of people have an open basically 2 dimensional run. Where birds can see all of the other birds 100% of the time. This really does not allow a bird to escape.

Once they start fighting, this can escalate to very ugly outcomes.

Mrs K