How old when choosing which roo to keep?

[Folly's place]

Years ago I had a small group of bantam Cochins in the flock, and at one year of age, the two roosters in this group decided to try to kill each other. It was hot outside, and they hardly made actual contact, except to damage each other's feathers, and work on having heat stroke. Neither would give up, the idiots! i took all of them to the auction, in two separate pens, where they found good homes with different people. Lovely birds, excellent with humans, just not each other.
Mary

 

[Ridgerunner]

First I suggest you decide what makes a rooster good for breeding. Your goals will be different form mine so go by what you want. But know what you want.

Then start removing the ones that don't measure up. Many of them should be obvious. I did this once with 18 Buff Rock cockerels. The first 15 were pretty easy. The last three were challenging, which means any of them could have been a good choice. It wasn't quite a coin flip but was pretty close.

As to when to start. That's purely up to you. For widely different reasons some people like to start pretty young, others like to wait longer, some much longer. Again, that comes down to your goals and your set-up.