I think my flock is scared of my rooster?

[NatJ]

If i did make another pen how would I go about growing my flock?

Leave the best rooster with the hens, and put the other roosters in the other pen.
"Best" rooster is according to whatever traits matter to you. Personally, I would look for good health and good temperament as top priorities, then consider other traits.

Not going to lie i am leaning towards nailing an upside down traffic cone to a tree and using a pair of loppers to cull.

That's how I would solve it. It's much less work than building more pens!

 

[ValarieF]

Is this really the case? My cousin has raised hundreds of chickens and right now he unluckily got the same ratio as me 5/5 and has since grown his flock to about 8 roosters and 40hens. His roosters do get aggresive at times with eachother and have pecked him a bit but he was still able to get to a more comfortable ratio? Is what im trying to do really that illogical/impossible?

No its not You can always give them away or sell them.

 

[bkint]

Sounds like a lot of work. I'd cull and bring in the Sonny's Sweet Bar-be-que sauce.

lol i kind of agree with you. Ive been collecting scrap lumber for about a decade. Which is kind of the reason i tried to become a chicken farmer in the first place. Apart from some corrugated roofing/chicken wire and screws making the coop hasnt been costly but it definitely is alot of work. Are these birds “ripe” or do i have to make him a “soup bird”?

 

[bkint]

If you're not willing to cull excess males then no amount of hatching will ever correct your ratios because over time chicks will hatch out 50-50.

Figure out what you actually WANT in a cockerel and start weeding down the ones who don't match what you want.

I personally have absolutely ZERO tolerance for a human-aggressive cockerel/rooster. I have a broomstick and a crockpot.

After that, I'm breeding to improve my birds. The ones who meet my criteria stay, at least for a trial. The ones who don't get their chance to sell on Craigslist before they go to the freezer.

It's a hard fact of chicken-keeping that if we want to hatch we have to have a plan for the males. If you can't bear to eat them yourself then give them away free on Craigslist and don't ask questions about the buyer's plans.

Thanks for the reply. Should I worry about the other roosters coming into the role of being top of the pecking order? Ive heard sometimes a sudden death will freak everyone out. Do i run the risk of my mellow roosters turning into aggressors? Or is there a chance I could have several roosters get along with each-other even with a piss poor hen ratio?

 

[bkint]

It's called "cockfighting" for a reason. *Sometimes* a pair of roosters will get along together, though without enough hens the girls can be in for a VERY rough ride.

It's less likely for them to get along than for them to fight. @Mrs. K has good advice about roosters.

Thanks again, My other roosters get along with everyone else great ive never seen them get aggressive other than a minor peck/feather pull. I have never seen them chase down another chicken and attack it like the mean rooster does. He is now at the top of my cut list and probably wont make it past this next week. The others I will let mature.

For any of the commercially available breeds, the normal breeding pattern for a hatchery flock is multiple roosters with a large number of hens. They must not kill each other or prevent mating, or that would not be the common practice. (That's where the commonly-quoted 1:10 ratio comes from. 10% roosters is typically enough to be sure all eggs are fertile.)

But that can be a very different situation than having a small number of roosters, and few hens, in a backyard coop.

In this case, yes I think most or all of the roosters should be removed from the females, for the sake of the hens' wellbeing. Butchering, rehoming, or another pen would all work as ways to remove them from the females.

If i did make another pen how would I go about growing my flock? Would i just let everyone out to free range at once and let them do their “thing” for the several hours a day that im available and then pen them up again? It seems a bit unorthodox. Not to mention sounds like a headache to get them into their respective pens. Not going to lie i am leaning towards nailing an upside down traffic cone to a tree and using a pair of loppers to cull.

 

[bkint]

You have entirely too many boys. And if the "mean" cockerel has bitten you multiple times and is challenging you, he should be the first on the cut list. You need to get it down to just one cockerel.

Is this really the case? My cousin has raised hundreds of chickens and right now he unluckily got the same ratio as me 5/5 and has since grown his flock to about 8 roosters and 40hens. His roosters do get aggresive at times with eachother and have pecked him a bit but he was still able to get to a more comfortable ratio? Is what im trying to do really that illogical/impossible?