- Nov 23, 2014
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We have a 1.5 year old Jersey Giant Rooster (along with a 1 year old Rhode Island Red Rooster and a ~8 month old Speckled Sussex Cockerel). When we first intro'd the JG he tried to get it on with all the ladies. All of them. None of them would let him. Actually, we very, very rarely see our JG try to mate at all. Same with our RIR. Our SS is the most dominant, but he doesn't seem to breed a lot or bother the hens. He's very protective of them and doesn't much want to let the other roosters near them. He is pretty good friends with the RIR, and I've seen him breed a handful of times. He honestly doesn't seem to have any issues with not being dominant. Now here comes the issue. Our JG clearly has the instinct to breed. I've actually seen him mostly only breed with the guineas... only to be chased off by our guinea cock and RIR. Well, we have some 10 week old pullets in the coop now, and a couple of the larger more mature ones have mysteriously died. The only thing we can really come up with is that our JG may be trying to breed with them because he can't breed with the mature hens. Has anyone heard of this? We're considering giving him to our neighbor who had to recently cull her rooster due to him being overly aggressive to her turkeys. Our JG isn't aggressive, and he backs off when our SS tells him to. I just can't think of anything else, but at the same time I can't imagine our SS who fended off a dog to try and save his flock at only 5 months old would let him do that to the pullets. I'm just baffled. We have been having some really bad weather, and I just don't know. I'd think if it was the weather though we'd be having more deaths than ones so sporadically. Either way, we have the smallest pullets in the house right now. Everyone else seems fine, and I don't see any worrisome behavior from the JG toward the pullets, but I have heard some horror stories...
