how can I stop lavender cockrel from attacking my hens

[madmedic]

my 14 week lavender cockrel has been raised from birth with my 4 hens two lavender and two frizzells but he keeps attacking my hens and now cocks 24/7 any advice greatly appriceiated
kindest regards
madmedic

 

[WalkingOnSunshine]

What, exactly, is he doing? Is he attacking them, or is he attempting to make them submit to him and recognize him as the alpha of the flock? Does he draw blood? How do the hens react?

Also, I don't know what you mean by "cocks 24/7."

Welcome to BYC!

 

[mshuntjump]

x2

 

[Ridgerunner]

Permanently removing him from the hens will stop his attempts to mate with them and dominate them. Roosters have very strong instincts about how they are supposed to take care of their flock. At 14 weeks it’s more about flock domination than pure mating. During the mating ritual, the one on top is dominating the one on bottom, whether willingly or by force.

A rooster cannot perform his functions as flock master if he is not the dominant one. In addition to his responsibilities to make sure all eggs are fertile, he finds them food, watches for danger, and keeps peace in his flock. He might help a broody take care of her chicks or help a hen find a good place to lay eggs. A good flock master has a lot of responsibilities. How can he break up fights if they dominate him? Why warn them of danger if they won’t listen to him? How can he do his job if another chicken is always talking back and being a smart aleck to him? He needs to dominate them to do his job.

I assume the pullets are the same age as the cockerel. The cockerel often matures a little earlier than the pullets. He has hormones running wild in his body telling him to mate and dominate the flock. He is an adolescent. He has strong urges and has not learned control. He’s a mess. He just doesn’t know what to do but he has to do something!

The pullets are probably a bit later maturing. That’s normal. They don’t know what is going on except that the cockerel is trying to dominate them. They don’t like it and are resisting, but he is stronger so he often forces them. Eventually they will mature enough to do their part and the flock will get a lot more peaceful. Think of them as unsupervised adolescents going through puberty.

In a normal flock with a mature dominant rooster and mature hens, the adults provide supervision. The dominant rooster smacks the young cockerels around if they get too cocky to maintain his position as the dominant one. The mature hens may smack them around too to teach them how to treat a lady. There is still a lot of rambunctious action going on with adolescents in the flock but it is more controlled.

In a normal mating:

The rooster dances to the hen to signal his intentions. He drops a wing and sort of circles the hen.

The hen squats. This gets her body on the ground so the weight of the rooster goes into the ground through her entire body, not just her legs.

The rooster hops on and grabs the back of her head. This helps him keep his balance and puts him in a better position to hit the target, but a big part of the head grab is to tell her to raise her tail up out of the way so he can hit the target.

The rooster touches vents and hops off. The hen stands up, fluffs up her feathers and shakes. This fluffy shake gets the sperm in the right spot in her body to fertilize the eggs.

There are a lot of variations of this involving the hen running away and the rooster chasing. As long as the hen squats to get his weight into the ground and he is not overly brutal (he will be strong and dominant) things are fine. But both the cockerel and the pullets need to mature enough to learn to do their part and follow proper technique.

You may be in for 6 to 8 weeks of a pretty rough time while they are maturing enough to do their part and learn the right techniques. Some roosters are just brutes and some hens never learn to submit. I don’t tolerate either in my flock. There are too many good roosters and hens out there to put up with it. But in most cases if you can get through the next weeks, they learn their part and things get pretty peaceful.

How can you tell if a cockerel or the pullets are not doing their part? That’s really hard while they are adolescents. Those hormones are running wild. As long as a pullet is not getting inured, with blood drawn, I let things go on. If there is injury, I suggest you isolate the rooster for a few weeks to let them mature and the pullet heal. As long as you only have one cockerel, it won’t hurt anything to separate them for a while. When they are recombined, he will immediately start mating with them to establish his dominance, but hopefully by that time the pullets will have matured enough to do their part.

Another option is to just get rid of the cockerel. The only reason you absolutely need a rooster is if you want fertile eggs. Anything else is just personal preference. One of the hens will probably take over some of the rooster’s flock master duties, maybe even as far as going through the mating ritual with another hen to show her dominance, but they are usually not as physical as the rooster.


Also, I don't know what you mean by "cocks 24/7."

Probably crows, not cocks. Darn self-correcting spell check!

 

[madmedic]

he is a lavender bantam and he attacks the hens not just making them submissive they squawk like they are distressed are really distressed and when i say cock i mean cock-a -doodle doing without a break all day ie he is crowing 24/7 without a break

 

[WalkingOnSunshine]

he is a lavender bantam and he attacks the hens not just making them submissive they squawk like they are distressed are really distressed and when i say cock i mean cock-a -doodle doing without a break all day ie he is crowing 24/7 without a break

You've answered your own question. Cull the rooster. If he's attacking hens, you certainly don't want to breed from him since he could pass this trait along to his offspring.