- Dec 24, 2014
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This is my first time having more than one rooster so I don't know what's "normal" or what's concerning behavior. We have 24 hens and 2 roosters; one is about 2 years old (speckled sussex) and the other is a little over a year (black australorp). They free range all day and have a pretty big run and coop area that they go in at night. I never intended to have more than one rooster but someone we knew ended up with a rooster in their batch of chicks and wasn't allowed to have roosters, so we agreed to take him. We added him into the flock last summer when we was a few months old. They were fine for a long time, just relatively harmless behaviors like whenever one rooster would mate a hen the other would come running over and try to intervene but it never escalated to a fight. I saw them fighting only a few times, but it didn't last long. Now it seems like there's a more serious shift happening. The last few days the sussex rooster isn't hanging out with the flock, doesn't want to go home at night, and just kind of sits around most of the day. He's also just walking around making this loud mournful cry instead of his usual rooster calls (crowing, alarm calling, clucking to his hens). I thought he was hurt but I looked him over and he seems fine? I do see them fighting more but there's never any blood. However the australorp rooster is clearly winning all their fights but then he doesn't let the sussex rooster alone and keeps attacking as he's trying to get away. I don't like that and I worry the australorp is getting into bullying behavior rather than just establishing pecking order. Is this something to intervene with or is it normal rooster behavior?