BarnwoodCoop
Songster
We recently rescued a buff orphington rooster, around a year old, who had never had any girls for himself and was left in quite bad conditions before we got him, (hatch of all boys, and then they gave him up to a breeder who kept around 50 birds, mix of hens and roos, in quite a small dirty area+ he was bleeding in the box we brought him home in.) so it was quite clear to us that he had gotten used to fighting.
wasnt expecting him to fly at me with a flurry of claws and beak pecks! took a chunk out of me.. we’ve never had an aggressive rooster before, they’ve all been timid and kept to themselves, but his issue with us isn’t what i’m asking about.
he’s very inexperienced with hens, stupidly so. after quarantine and health checks we let him meet up with our 2 biggest hens, and they took quite a shining to him.
problem is- he has no freaking idea how to mount them !!
at the moment he does his little dance and then just grabs hold of their necks, not feathers but their actual necks and doesn’t let go!! how do we help him? these 2 girls are very close to my heart as they’ve been with us the longest time and id hate for him to hurt them.
we were planning on getting orphington pullets in a few days, and we aren’t too sure if pairing him up with also mildly inexperienced hens is still a good idea or if its a bad one.
i dont really know what the right thing to do is, all i know is that i would certainly prefer my 2 girls dont get hurt by him.
extra context: we have 3 other roosters that were part of a hatch last year. our last buff rooster tolerated them because they were hatchlings, and also his fav girls chicks. now they’re grown up and he’s been gone a while, we had no idea how to go about introducing them. we’ve probably botched it half to hell if i’m honest. its pretty obvious he wants to protect these 2 girls weve given him, but he’s too afraid to stand up to the other roos, so he decided to attack us instead lol.
wasnt expecting him to fly at me with a flurry of claws and beak pecks! took a chunk out of me.. we’ve never had an aggressive rooster before, they’ve all been timid and kept to themselves, but his issue with us isn’t what i’m asking about.
he’s very inexperienced with hens, stupidly so. after quarantine and health checks we let him meet up with our 2 biggest hens, and they took quite a shining to him.
problem is- he has no freaking idea how to mount them !!
at the moment he does his little dance and then just grabs hold of their necks, not feathers but their actual necks and doesn’t let go!! how do we help him? these 2 girls are very close to my heart as they’ve been with us the longest time and id hate for him to hurt them.
we were planning on getting orphington pullets in a few days, and we aren’t too sure if pairing him up with also mildly inexperienced hens is still a good idea or if its a bad one.
i dont really know what the right thing to do is, all i know is that i would certainly prefer my 2 girls dont get hurt by him.
extra context: we have 3 other roosters that were part of a hatch last year. our last buff rooster tolerated them because they were hatchlings, and also his fav girls chicks. now they’re grown up and he’s been gone a while, we had no idea how to go about introducing them. we’ve probably botched it half to hell if i’m honest. its pretty obvious he wants to protect these 2 girls weve given him, but he’s too afraid to stand up to the other roos, so he decided to attack us instead lol.