How to keep roosters

[Mama Bay]

I currently have 34 chickens all together in 1 coop and run. 10 are roosters but only 1 is an adult (and 7 adult hens)... The others are 11 and 10 weeks. Introducing the chicks to the coop went great however I am wondering how many roosters do I need to rehome? My big chickens free range and I will allow the little ones to do the same. I do plan to build a couple of breeding pens/seperate coops for some certain breeds I hope to breed next year but otherwise I had planned just to keep the others together. There are 4 cockerals Id like to rehome which would leave me with 6. Is that a bad idea??

 

[Free Feather]

I would just rehome the four for now, then see how the rest act after that. If the young ones were raised around the adult rooster, it might make things smoother. People on here will tell you that you need a dozen hens for only one rooster, but that is not always the case. Give them room and watch. I have 15 cockerels growing up around 2 roosters right now. Some are crowing and trying to mate. It is interesting to watch them work things out as males - the big guys will chase or peck a youngster when he starts to put on the moves, the cockerels will feign and start to mock fight to get the order figured out. In the end, only a few males will typically be allowed to mate regularly and crow. The order is constantly changing, though. If you introduce any more boys later, the ones near the bottom will be the nastiest with asserting the order because they do not want to be any lower on the pole. They might not always 'love' each other, but it can be done. If there are any problems, it will probably be the rooster getting angry at the cockerels.

 

[Mama Bay]

Thanks for your insight!

 

[aart]

@Free Feather makes good points....but I wonder how their birds are housed?

@Mama Bay I'd strongly suggest that you get those breeding pens built now, or at least a bachelor pen, that way you have place(s) to segregate any problem birds.
When cock/erel things get ugly, it can happen fast and furiously.

Tho being ahead of the game, with an adult cock and hens around, they may well school the cockerels and keep the peace.

 

[Mama Bay]

@aart do the roosters stay together in the bachelor pen indefinitely? How does that work with free ranging?

 

[aart]

@aart do the roosters stay together in the bachelor pen indefinitely? How does that work with free ranging?

Not sure as I have never kept multiple cock/erles long term myself, but have read of many using a bachelor pen and/or breeding pens.
There are many ways to manage multiple cocks for breeding goals.

I do know first hand that when young cockerels come into their hormones there can be violent fighting and/or over mating and/or disruption of laying,
and removing them to a separate enclosure can calm things down as lighting fast as they went bad. There have been several times that I was darn glad I had a split coop and some wire dogs crates on hand. I keep the cockerels from my hatches until they start to cause trouble or before 15 weeks(whichever comes first), then I eat them.

 

[Free Feather]

You could do rotational free ranging, like Monday is for the girls, Tuesday for the guys, Wednesday for the girls, etc.

Just know that if you separate a rooster from everyone else, you either have to make it so everyone still knows he is around and can see him, or that he never goes back in with them. If not, he will either be bullied badly and rarely ever regain his position, or be the major bully. That may not always be the case, but it has been with me.

 

[Mrs. K]

As Ridgerunner often states, these are individual animals and no one can predict with 100% what will happen or how they will act.

Generally speaking you have a couple of scenarios, and if you can prepare for them is best.

7 roosters + 30 hens and everyone gets along in one coop and free range. This would be sweet, but in my opinion highly unlikely. The ongoing problems would be a lot of over mating, and roosters fighting for breeding rights. If you have an extremely large set up, maybe. However, general ag practices, from horses, cattle, pigs, and chickens is to keep the minimum and a spare entact male animals for breeding. Otherwise there is a lot of strife.

A rooster/bachelor pen... these boys would need to be kept completely from the laying flock. You could free range them alternate days. However, rooster really only like hens, and want to be with hens, and if you free ranged them all together, they would have all of the problems if you kept them all together. If you only have two pens, one for layers and one for bachelors, not too big of problem. If you have multiple breeding pens and therefore multiple groups of chickens, the free ranging time gets to be much less.

I see you have a baby on your back, roosters can be dangerous around small children, especially with people who are just getting started with chickens and don't have a lot of experience with roosters.

And every time you hatch chickens, one can expect 50% roosters, so this problem will be ongoing.

You originally asked if keeping 6 roosters and 30 hens was a bad idea. IMO yes is the answer. If I had 30 hens, I would not want more than 3 roosters, and very likely would only have 2.

[Aarts advice to have different pens ASAP is very good advice, roosters don't slowly go bad, the signs are easy to miss, and you can be in a bloody wreck pretty darn quick, a pen to separate fighters needs to be available or something can wind up dead, and not a pretty death either[/B]

 

[Mama Bay]

What are the signs of trouble? I honestly spend too much time in the run chick observing. I have noticed 1 of my cockerals try to mount some of the pullets but he doesn't get very far with it... Otherwise there's an occasional chest bump and flaring of neck feathers... But the pullets do that too.

 

[aart]

Had a young cockerel in with the main flock, his sire was the main cock at the time, when Jr became active Sr did not school him and Jr relentlessly pursued the hens and pullets.The hens kicked his butt, egg production went down and still Sr did nothing. Jr was harassing the girls relentlessly and would stalk the nest perch and jump on any hen exiting the nests....that's when I removed Jr to the coop partition, egg production went back up, Jr was delicious.

Last spring had a cockerel who was older by 3-4 weeks than his brooder mates, he was going to be the keeper because of his breed.
He clumsily pursued the pullets semi aggressively but not too bad and eventually they mostly submitted to him......
......when the younger cockerels began crowing the older cockerel became extremely rough with the pullets and the younger cockerels tried to pick fights with him.
I removed the younger cockerels to cages and the older cockerel immediately settled back down to his usual mellow self and is now my main cock.

Those are my first hand examples, you may see different behavior...but you will know it when you see it, it will alarm you but you'll remember you've been warned and will have a place to sequester the 'bad boys' and peace will reign once more(or something like that).