Cockral won't make any noise.

annaf

In the Brooder
5 Years
Mar 12, 2014
29
0
24
Hi

I have a 25 week old cockral, he won't integrate with my 3 hens who vary from 2 years to 1 year in age. Everytime we try to put him in he looses his tail feathers, they gang up on him and relentlessly peck him till he bleeds. Any way I'm happy to keep him seperate but he has stopped making any noise at all. It's sad as I was looking forward to hearing him crow in the mornings. Any ideas if anyone thinks he will start up again, also should I try him with the hens again.
 
How large of an area do your chickens have? I don't have any problems with chickens making each other bleed when they get to free-range in the back yard.
 
Those are some tough hens you have. Well, they didn't come up with the term "hen pecked" out of thin air. A young cockerel is typically the subject of such pecking. Is there a way you could place him in an area where they can see him, but not touch him? Let him heal and regain his confidence, poor guy. Hopefully he will start crowing again. Once he gets older they may give him more respect. You might want to consider placing the boss hen in a separate enclosure for a day or so when you introduce him to give him a better chance of establishing some authority with the hens.
 
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Hi

Thank you for the repies, we have a large roaming area with a hen house that can fit 6 birds - only have 4 including cockeral.

We keep him seperate, I hand reared him so I think this didn't help. I'll try introducing him to one hen at a time shortly and see how we go.
 
He's just a baby yet at 25 weeks (in other words, roughly 6 months old). He needs to grow up a little in order to earn his place in your flock of mature hens. They will not respect him until he's able to prove himself to be a good flock master. I believe that when he's old enough to be dominant over the hens he will crow again. I can't say when would be the best time to put him back in with them. It might help to have some hiding places in their pen and a separate feeder and waterer. One nice thing about putting him in with mature hens, they will teach him some manners.
 
We had a lovely wake up this morning, bless him he crowed!
 

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