First disaster with free ranging 4 month olds.....

[ihvpower]

yes, roosters can be very helpful, as long as you don't mind the aggression.

Out of 40 roosters that I've had, maybe three of them were aggressive and they weren't towards me, only others! lol Some of them were so sweet and docile, more so than the girls!

 

[slordaz]

yes, roosters can be very helpful, as long as you don't mind the aggression.

not all roosters are people aggressive, we did have one was fine around us though btu was worse than a guard dog if strangers were around lol, the one thing you want to remember is it learns you are boss, and teach kids not to chase the hens as that is surest way to have it go wrong.

Between the barred rock rooster we used to have and the blue Swede drake they would protect the clocks against even a hawk

 

[littlepip]

not all roosters are people aggressive, we did have one was fine around us though btu was worse than a guard dog if strangers were around lol, the one thing you want to remember is it learns you are boss, and teach kids not to chase the hens as that is surest way to have it go wrong

True. My last rooster was extremely aggressive, mostly because my neighbors had a huge dog that liked to threaten him. he took everything as dangerous after that.

 

[cmom]

So sorry for you loss. I don't have an electric fence but I do have electric wire around my coops and very large pens. Many years ago I had a coyote jump over a 5' fence and killed some birds. Most of the time they inspect first with their noses. Some have attempted to dig under the wire but when they touch the wire they don't try again. I have heavy duty netting covering my pens and concrete under the gates all due to losses from predators in the past. I have free ranged but now the birds actually prefer to stay in their pens even when I open their gates. I have several roosters but they can be killed too by predators. There is a post somewhere on BYC with a member's video of a fox chasing a rooster around.