Flock of Roosters?

[sgobe]

So, I recently bought a straight run of Orpingtons. 6 out of 9 turned out to be cockerels. Is it possible to keep a flock of roosters? I've been doing some reading which says, it's a possibility if no hens are available for fighting. Now I DO have hens and would have to build another coop/run for my "boy band". If it is possible to keep them together how far,away from the hens would they need to be?

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

"Out of sight/out of mind" - the best chance of successful bachelor flock maintenance is if the two gender groups are entirely separated so that the boys aren't seeing the girls and having that bring out their hormonal urges and competition. The more exposure they have to knowing the female flock is there the higher the chance of having aggression issues between the males.

 

[susan6sw]

I have a friend who raises a LOT of chickens and she has roosters. She keeps them by breed in separate stalls in her barn. they seem to all get along because there are no hens around.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

I have kept roosters together, they establish a pecking order young, and only occasionally squabble, as long as they are clutch mates. I don't actually see the problem with them being able to see the hens, I would think it would be less frustrating than hearing them and not be able to see them, the crowing would be non-stop, and you could actually rotate roosters with the hens, as long as it's short durations, I have done this without too much trouble.

 

[javaferret]

Back when I had my first batch of chickens, I ended up with 7 roosters and 18 hens, one standard and the rest of the roos were various bantams breeds. At first I had everyone together, but then the poor hens were getting ganged up on ( one would pin a hen then all of them mounted her one after another, omg the poor hens), so I did end up making a separate pen for the roosters. I kept one rooster with the girls, and the rest of them had their own dude ranch on the other side of the yard.

In both settings the roosters were fine with each other, once they decided who was 1st, 2nd 3rd they very rarely challenged each other. They even seem to travel together in certain groups, and seemed to like being together, hanging out, eating, and rolling in sand together. Only three of them would crow a lot, the other four were fairly silent, but the three that did crow..ya..alot one after the other. The breeds I had were standard EE, bantam EE, d'uccle, cochin bantam, and polish, so not very aggressive types, tho the EE bantams were the most feisty out of the group.