Introducing a new rooster to hens and chicks

[Thecowboysgirl]

I have eight adult hens, and five chicks who are about five weeks old. If you've read my other thread you know the roo injured four of my hens pretty bad breeding them, he sliced them up with his spurs, one to the point that we weren't sure if she would make it.

All four injured hens look liek they will be okay, they are seperate from him now- he is with the other four hens & his five chicks (he is a great dad). All hens are bare backed from him.

Consequently, we are considering replacing him to try and find a gentler rooster. We have clipped and rounded his spurs since discovering the wounded hens though.

If we were to indtroduce a strange roo with the chicks, would he kill them? Would a new adult roo be aggressive with the hens at first? Would they survive it without saddles? (since they are bare from the current roo)

What is protocoll to put a new roo in with a flock?

 

[seminolewind]

Some are better gentlemen than others. I just introduced a young roo. The girls chased him around and picked on him for a while. He would hide. But now they're a flock.
So, I would go young.

 

[Lollipop]

Any young rooster will be picked on by older hens/pullets. Then ya gotta go through the teenage boy stage when he overbreeds everything in sight. So there ya have a young rooster that is rough on the girls and deadly to chicks. Older hens and pullets are also deadly to young chicks unless they have a mama to deffend them. A mature cock is more of a gentleman 99% of the time and is quite "fatherly" to young chicks and a gentleman to the ladies. There are exceptions, but they are few and far between. Find a mature cock and you will be glad you did...........Pop

 

[seminolewind]

Any young rooster will be picked on by older hens/pullets. Then ya gotta go through the teenage boy stage when he overbreeds everything in sight. So there ya have a young rooster that is rough on the girls and deadly to chicks. Older hens and pullets are also deadly to young chicks unless they have a mama to deffend them. A mature cock is more of a gentleman 99% of the time and is quite "fatherly" to young chicks and a gentleman to the ladies. There are exceptions, but they are few and far between. Find a mature cock and you will be glad you did...........Pop

Never thought of getting a old rooster, LOL. What an idea!

 

[Lollipop]

Never thought of getting a old rooster, LOL. What an idea!

Back in the days when my yard was full of game chickens, I would have several broody hens hatching as many as 100 chicks at a time. Game chickens grow as fast as any breed, but it doesn't take long for the little killers to fight seriously. To manage this, when any of my chicks were weened by their mama, I had a large pen, 12 X 24 that I would put them all in. To this mix, I would add a mature cock to police the goins on. The idea was that if anyone was gonna kick butt, it would be the old man. Worked all the time with only one or two exceptions andt those were extreme trouble makers. I never had a problem with the mature cock hurting the chicks and I could keep stags together til they were 7-8 months old. One notable troublemaker was a Brazilian stag that sassed the older cock and got his eye slapped out. But any of the mature cocks that did police duty were trouble free and took good care of the youngsters, even with pullets present, which in most circumstanses meant trouble as the boys started to notice the difference. Go for a mature rooster.......Pop