PLEASE let's not turn this into a typical rooster thread! I am not going to cull him or stop handling him, as he is (so far) the closest thing to a show prospect I have hatched this year.
MJ is a 10 week old Araucana cockerel that was incubator hatched and hand raised. He has nice tufts, beautiful dark legs and so far his body type is spot on. IF I can get over my fear of diseases I would like to show him. Therefore I have been handling him as much as I can. I try to get in 2-3 handling sessions a day. I practice touching him all over, picking him up and holding him until I can feel his body relax, rolling him side to side and spreading his wings. Saturday morning, as I was giving him his food bowl, he jumped on my arm, grabbed my thumb with his beak and started humping my arm . I knocked him off and "pecked" him on top of his head 3-4 times with my finger and he coward down like a squatting pullet. All was good until this morning when he did it again. This time he ran away from my finger pecks and I only got to nail him once. I know he is in his hormonal stage, and so far this has only happened in the early mornings. Should I just keep trying to "peck him" like another chicken would or is there another method to stop him from wanting to get jiggy with my arm? Oh, and there have been no other incidents of any kind so far other than these two.
MJ is a 10 week old Araucana cockerel that was incubator hatched and hand raised. He has nice tufts, beautiful dark legs and so far his body type is spot on. IF I can get over my fear of diseases I would like to show him. Therefore I have been handling him as much as I can. I try to get in 2-3 handling sessions a day. I practice touching him all over, picking him up and holding him until I can feel his body relax, rolling him side to side and spreading his wings. Saturday morning, as I was giving him his food bowl, he jumped on my arm, grabbed my thumb with his beak and started humping my arm . I knocked him off and "pecked" him on top of his head 3-4 times with my finger and he coward down like a squatting pullet. All was good until this morning when he did it again. This time he ran away from my finger pecks and I only got to nail him once. I know he is in his hormonal stage, and so far this has only happened in the early mornings. Should I just keep trying to "peck him" like another chicken would or is there another method to stop him from wanting to get jiggy with my arm? Oh, and there have been no other incidents of any kind so far other than these two.
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