Hens and roosters

[Nebraska04]

Also what breeds are the roosters?
Different breeds could affect how vicious or placid they can be...

The breeds are:
Barnevelder
Black jersey giant
Steele egger

 

[Nebraska04]

Ehhh, maybe....but breed doesn't guarantee demeanor.
Especially with multiple males in tight spaces.
Environment of competition can really bring out the worst of all their behaviors.

They will have a 15x17.5 Coop and will rotate between 10 acres, 1 acre at a time for their run.

 

[Nebraska04]

I find that the numbers aren't that important. There are people on here that regularly keep ratios smaller than that. I often have pretty close to that ratio but that's usually with just one rooster.

I also find that breed is not tremendously important. You can read stories on this forum where a rooster of any breed has been horrible (hen too for that matter) for one person while the same breed has been great for others. Breeds may have tendencies but you have to have enough of that breed for averages to mean something. With one of each, you do not.

Individual personalities do make a difference but I find that strain is more important than breed. Let's use Rhode Island Reds, for example. If you breed RIR's with an eye toward what you consider good behavior in a few generations you typically have a flock where the majority of the roosters from that flock exhibit that behavior. A former member of this forum did that with his show quality RIR's and his RIR roosters were not brutes at all. But if you allow RIR's with what you consider bad behavior to breed, your flock may get worse, it will not get better. Unfortunately very few people breed for behavior so it's just pot luck what you get with any breed. So that's point #1, what is the personality of the chickens involved.

I'm not sure which behaviors you are concerned about. If you are talking about human aggression I think strain (heredity) has some effect but how you manage them has a lot. I'll let others argue about how much is heredity versus environment and what the best way to manage them is, I'll just say i believe both have an effect.

If you are talking about roosters fighting, I think part of that is due to personality. Age and how much room they have are important. For any of this in general the more room they have the better. As far as fighting I think it is the most critical. I'm not talking about that 4 square feet in the coop and 10 in the run. Can they get totally out of sight of each other would be the ideal. When they are cockerels and the hormones of puberty hit they will determine which is boss. That might be fights to the death, especially of room is tight, or they may work it out without any getting injured. That's not just one fight and it's done. They mature at different rates so you can expect them to revisit who is boss occasionally. Often, if they don't kill each other as cockerels, mature roosters work out an accommodation as to how to work together to take care of the flock, often with each having his own harem and his own territory. But their can be exceptions to this where they actually hang together.

If there are no females to fight over they typically do not fight any worse than with an all-female flock setting up the pecking order. But it doesn't matte if it is one female or 20, if they have a female to fight over they will.

If you are talking about the females being over-mated you can find plenty of examples where a ratio of 1 rooster with 1 or 2 hens is not a problem. You can find examples of where this is a problem with 1 rooster with over 20 hens. Some of that is the personality of the male. I think the females have a part to play in the social interaction within the flock. Most of the time you read about this on this forum it's about immature cockerels and pullets, not mature roosters and hens. But some roosters (I think because of their personality) never grow out of this phase. Some hens are more prone to these issues. Usually if you can get past the adolescent phase thy grow out of this but not always.

I don't know how old your chickens are, how much room they have or will have, or other things about how you manage them. You may be OK. But I'd have a plan B ready for instant use. That means a place to isolate one or two of those males if you need to.

Good luck!

I replied with information about the chickens