How many roosters is too many?

[aart]

if i let them go in a forrest in the spring do they have any chance of surviving ?

Just letting them roam widely won't make them not come around your flock.
If you're going to hatch, you have to be responsible about getting rid of the extra males.

 

[Silkie Princess]

I have 10+ males with my hens (totally not a good rooster to hen ratio) and they are fine. I only had one rooster fight happen and it wasn't "that bad". Okay one rokster lost his wattles but it didn't hapoen again. They are all bantams by the way

 

[RoostersAreAwesome]

With last years mail order chicken i ended up with a rooster(oops). fast forward the first round of home hatched chicks was 4 months ago. Now that they are maturing i tell 3 out of 4 of them are roosters. So that puts my flock at 4 boys and 18 girls. Yesterday morning one of the young roosters was all bloody. Still hoping they all will live happy happy but that sure. Is there a rule of thumb on what is a good ratio???.

Im not at the point of doing anything drastic but i don't want to ignore reality. View attachment 2968640

Dumping chickens is both cruel and illegal. If you can’t figure out what to do with the roosters I would put them in a separate pen for now to reduce fighting.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Normally, I wouldn't pile on. A number of extremely well respected poster have said this already. But on the off chance another voice is of benefit.

Dumping your birds is SELFISH and IRRESPONSIBLE. Apart from being almost certainly fatal to the dumped bird, it helps to provide disease vectors dangerous to those of us who engage in responsible animal ownership. If your "solution" to a problem is to quietly dump it on everyone else and hope it goes away, do us all a favor. Rehome all your birds (and any other animals you own) and stop voting.

As to the original question? How many roosters is "too many" depends on your circumstances, your management, and your goals. For breeding purposes, 1:10 or therabouts is good for ensuring high fertility. It has NOTHING to do with behavior. For eating purposes, the highest ratio you can raise in your facility (X:0) is what you want, since boys grow faster and heavier than girls. For flock protection purposes??? Roosters are unreliable protectors, and largely ineffective. Sometimes it works, often it doesn't. Depends entirely on the individual - there are no guarantees. For egg laying? The lowest ratio of roosters to hens is what you want (0:X). The girls don't need the boys to pop out eggs.