How to put new roosters into a flock

[Evan cooley]

How do you put a new rooster in with a rooster that is showing aggression

 

[sourland]

You don't unless you want him injured or killed. It is nearly impossible to get a rooster with an established flock to accept another rooster. Everything in his makeup is about assuring that his DNA gets to carry on - not that of a newcomer.

 

[Evan cooley]

The new rooster will be bigger than him I put a bantam rooster with him and he left it alone

 

[BantyChooks]

Agree with sour. I did it ONCE with a pair of very docile roosters and it still took a long integration period and many fights for them to settle into a very uneasy peace. If at all possible, just sell one.

 

[chickens really]

I have a Huge Rooster. I raised Chicks under my Broody Hens. The last hatch I held back till I could sex them..One Pullet and 3 Cockerels.
The Cockerels matured and my Huge Roo took no crap from them. He beat them up daily for having Cockerel fights..Keep them separate or don't get another Rooster..I know if I dared bring another mature Rooster here, My Rooster would kill him..all my Cockerels are gone..

 

[aart]

How? do you put a new rooster in with a rooster that is showing aggression

I would ask...Why?

 

[Ridgerunner]

I have a few questions. How old are they, the new and the old? Whether one is still a chick, has hit puberty, or is a fully mature rooster changes things.

How much room do you have? Your chances of success are much greater if you have a lot of room. I’m not talking about so many square feet per chicken, can they get totally out of sight of each other? When I say a lot of room I mean a lot.

Are they going to be with females? If it is a bachelor pad where there are no females to fight over it may not be any worse than adding hens to an all-female flock. If there are hens to fight over it can get real serious really quickly.

I’ll also ask what your goals are, why do you want to add a new rooster? If we know something about your goals and situation we may be able to come up with helpful suggestions. The more we know the more likely we can help.

 

[Evan cooley]

Ridgerunner one will be with another rooster and 7 hens the other will be with just 4 hens the last two will be in a bachelor pad they will have 18 by 20 foot pens they are still only about 4 weeks old

 

[coach723]

Even if it worked, two roo's to seven hens is too many roo's, really 10 hens to one roo is better. Your hens will take a beating. You would be far better off, if you feel you need to keep that many roo's, to have a separate coop/run area for your bachelor roo's. Roo's can live in relative peace together in the absence of hens. With hens, they will tend to fight and it can be ugly.
Every roo is different and there is no way to know how the new one will be once he starts to mature. He could usurp your current roo. There are no absolutes with roo's, sometimes it works that they tolerate each other, sometimes not. It works best if they are raised together, but even that is not a guarantee. Agree completely with Ridgerunner that space, and lots of it, would be necessary.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The two in the bachelor pad, no problems. The others, you will need to integrate them.

I don’t know how old the four hens are. I’ll assume they are older than the cockerels. My suggestion there is to raise that cockerel with the other two in the bachelor pen. Once he is fairly mature, I’d say 7 to 8 months, I’d put him in the pen with the hens and see what happens. If he is mature enough the hens should accept him. He’ll mate with them and become flock leader pretty smoothly. The dominant hen may resist giving up her dominant role, he may chase her and force her to mate, but she should pretty quickly accept his dominance. This type of integration is often very peaceful and calm.

If he is not quite mature enough they will probably resist him. They’ll probably run away, he’ll probably chase them and force mate them to impose his will instead of relying on his magnificence and self-confidence to win them over. This is what I think is most likely to happen. As long as no chicken is bleeding or injured, let then work it out. It’s possible the lead hen will be able to dominate him for a bit, knocking him off if he tries to mate another hen for example, and there may be some fighting, but in general they should be fairly peaceful until he matures enough to totally take over.

If he is a total wimp they might beat the crap out of him. If this happens I’d pull him out. You can try keeping him with the bachelors another couple of months, he may just be a really slow-maturing cockerel. Personally I’d look at one of the other cockerels. I find these really slow-maturing cockerels tend to become brutes, depending on physical force instead of getting to the point that he can win them by personality. I think they tend to become human-aggressive too. They lack the self-confidence they need for the role of flock master.

Now the hard one. How do you integrate one chick into an existing flock? You say you’ve seen aggression from that existing rooster, what did that look like? What happened? Usually my mature roosters don’t bother a chick that young, they tend to think the chick is theirs so they are more likely to take care of it than attack it, though usually mine just ignore them. The hens are the higher danger. But maybe that chick is old enough the rooster sees him as another rooster’s chick. Mine are either raised with the flock by a broody hen or raised in my brooder in the coop so the chicks are seen as part of the flock from Day 1.

In general I might (most likely would not) try a normal integration, house the chick next to the flock for a week or two where they can see but not touch. Then turn it loose with them to see what happens, but do this when you can observe. I raise chicks (male and female) with the flock all the time but not a single chick. When the males go through puberty they start bothering the hens. The rooster chases them when that happens but usually the cockerels get away. This can be dangerous to the cockerels, but eventually one matures enough to fight the rooster for flock dominance. This might be a fight to the death, but usually the loser runs away and the winner is boss.

What makes a single chick so hard is that chickens are social animals, they want to be with other chickens. But if a chick approaches an adult they will likely get pecked, especially the hens. Normally the chicks form a sub-flock and hang out together but avoid the adults. A single chick can’t hang with anybody.

If they have enough room the purpose of this is that the cockerels are expelled from the flock. They form a bachelor flock until they mature enough for one to claim his own territory and start attracting their own hens or go back and dethrone the dominant rooster. I don’t think you have enough room for any real separation in the pen with that flock.

An alternative is to keep that rooster in the bachelor pen with the others until he is fully mature, maybe a year old. Then toss him in with the other rooster and his flock. They will fight. It might be a fight to the death, they may work out an accommodation on how to work together to take care of the flock. You don’t have a lot of room for that, I think it is really risky.

I don’t know why you want two roosters in with those seven hens. If you can tell us what you hope to achieve we might be able to come up with an acceptable way to reach your goals. With that space I think you are taking a really big chance of being disappointed.