Introducing a Rooster to the Flock

[Anawotka]

We acquired a new rooster. He is 16 weeks old. We have had him separated from the 12 hens in a section of the run for 3 days. We have two coops, one on each side of the run, and he has had one of the coops all to himself. The girls come by to visit him and everything seems fine except for one hen who gets all puffed up and combative. (While I was changing his water she snuck in to his side and started fighting him.) Question is, what is my next step? How long should we keep him separated? Do I let him in the run with the hens? Let him free range? Put him the coop at night? The way the coop is situated, I don't think we can have him in the coop with the hens separated from him. It's all or nothing. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[CluckerFamily]

I personally keep my new rooster separate and far away from the ladies to make sure he isn’t carrying any disease that could kill the flock.
Since he has already been near the ladies, it is too late to move him away if he is sick.
I choose to keep my rooster within the flock but the ladies can’t get to him for 3 weeks, other people do 2 weeks but I like to make sure there will be no issues.

 

[aart]

I'd keep him confined fro at least a week to 'home' him to his coop.
Might be best to let him out to range with the girls.

 

[ATRoos314]

I don't know what's proper, but we kept our new rooster in a separate container in the run for about three days (we know the person we adopted him from, so there really wasn't an issue of potential disease). We would take him out and let him walk around for a few minutes closely supervised every day, then put him back in his container. After about three days, we put him in the coop at night after the girls had gone to sleep. The next morning, everyone woke up and there was no fighting or issues that we have seen. Now, I should say, this rooster is a bantam and all of our hens are average to large sized, so this little roo is much smaller than all the girls. He is also 7 years old, and all the girls are only about 5 months old and have never had a rooster around, so this all might have something to do with how well it went. We accidentally adopted him. It wasn't a planned thing, so we kinda had to wing it.