How Do I Acclimate Him?

[ClareScifi]

I forgot I had posted here. Thanks for the crate info, everyone. I just now read it.

I can relate to that Senior rooster pecking the young one through the cage. When I've put my little Roo in the cage in the coop, the StepMama was very aggressive with him, pecking him through the cage. But now he is better able to hold his own, I think.

I appreciate everyone's advice. Lots to think about.

 

[suzeqf]

I have a hen raised chick that was raised in a large metal dog kennel(boxer size) with a heat lamp on top of it and it worked very well. The others were able to see and hear him and when I started letting him out with the flock at 4 weeks old for a hour or so at a time no one bothered him because they all knew him and now I let him out every morning and put him up at night but the last few days he's had to stay in his kennel because it's snowed and was nasty cold and he hasn't figured out how to get back in the shop if he follows mom into the yard. When I get chicks this spring i'm going to use the same set up I did with him it works great. I forgot to say I wrapped my kennel with plastic hardware cloth and that keep Grayson in and keep beaks out

 

[ClareScifi]

Very good idea, suzeqf! Thanks for sharing it!

 

[KY Mae Hen]

My rooster will attack anyone or anything. He doesn't attack constantly but at least once a week he will attack me, I either slap him or gently project him or show him the broom. My concern is how he is going to accept the 9 week old dominic rooster chicklet. He has already shown a serious aggression to both the rooster and hen chicklet. And I guess today the hens took after the chicklets too.

 

[teach1rusl]

Well I kind of like your idea of moving someone in with him...someone he gets along with, until spring, then transitioning. By the following winter everyone would be used to one another and it wouldn't be needed. Of course my chickens are pets, so that's probably why this option sounds so feasable to me. He and his buddy could still go outside during the day, and come inside at night. But the crate transition sounds like a good option too.

 

[ClareScifi]

He is doing fine, is still in the solarium. He goes out during the days when it is nice and plays with the hens out there. I keep the other 2 roosters apart from him. He chases the hens, and they run. He's not aggressive, and when they run away, he doesn't chase them down and attack them for sex. He's very gentlemanly. They are still getting to know each other.

Once I find homes for the other 2 roos he can be out there most of the time. I highly doubt he'll ever try to mate with his StepMama. They don't care for each other much. I think he will mate with the hens his own age, once they get more used to him.

Since he was raised alone in the solarium, he seems to enjoy being alone. He's always entertained himself well. I think I was worrying about nothing.

You hear all the stereotypes about human only children-- spoiled, lonely, bratty. Those are false. I was raised as an only child and have many only child friends, and frankly, most of them are a lot nicer than the folks I know who were raised with tons of siblings. I find the only children to be generous, sharing, well-adjusted. I think the lonely chicken stereotypes are similarly true, based upon my own observations of personal experience. Now if a chicken was raised with other chickens and they died or were yanked away, that would be another story. But a chicken who is raised alone with just a human companion is a different situation.