Ref multi Roo/Cockerel flocks, we started off with 6 Silky hens (3 white, 3 black) that had just reached point of lay and 6 eggs. They came from a free ranging flock and the 'home' Cockerel said goodbye to the hens as we were choosing them.
The hens went into the coup and the eggs went in the nest boxes in the hope one of the hens would go all broody and sit. Didn't happen. Some new eggs were laid but there was no interest to sit, we left it for a couple of weeks while a brooder and all the bits was winding it's way to us via
amazon and then transferred the lot and waited......
Out of all the eggs that went in (10 IIRC) we hatched two, one sadly didn't make it but the other one did and turned into a proud White Cockerel (called Chirpy by SWMBO, I wanted to go with Paxo but was out voted). Considering our only previous experience with chickens involved either a recipe or products from a famous southern US Colonel who's name appears all over the country here in the UK we were complete novices with the chicken, live, clucking.. variety and I thought we had done pretty well so far. Flock now stands at 1 white Silky Cockerel, 3 white silky hens and three black silky hens.
12 months down the line, we have introduced the Roo to the flock at about the 21 week point and he settled in well, after about 3 months we then allowed the hens to keep the eggs for a couple of weeks and sorted them under a couple of hens that were sitting nicely and to hatch them. We ended up with 9 out of 12 eggs hatching into chicks, these were all left in the run with the flock for the hens to bring up and they all survived. Once old enough to sex it became obvious we had 4 Silky Cockerels and 5 Silky Hens all white. So the flock is now standing at 5 Cockerels and 11 Hens.
All the new arrivals have now matured, with egg production having gone up from 1 or 2 a day to a steady 6 or 7 a day it's obvious the hens have started to lay (egg production fell right of the scale while the chicks were in with the flock and growing up) and the Cockerels are all crowing
some better than others lol. Between the Cockerels all seems to be at peace, the original and eldest is the boss, the next eldest (by a week) is 2i/c while the remaining three are all like stroppy teenagers but more about that later. The Hens have settled into the flock very well, no problems between them at all.
Issue.
Of the original hens, one of the Black ones (Bertha) was the dominant hen and led the flock before the Cockerel was introduced, she also kept her 'rank' as Chirpy grew up until he took over as boss and she then became 2i/c of the flock and head hen so to speak. The three younger Cockerels are bullying her to the extreme, so much so that she has retreated to the coup and doesn't come out as she gets jumped on by three junior Cockerels as soon as they spot her. Its getting to the point that we are now feeding her in the coup.
Question.
Is this behaviour likely to continue or will they (the junior Cockerels) fall into line and behave. Or am I either re-homing them or getting the recipe book out?
and we have two confirmed roos but we don't want to give too many away as our coop is a big size and the money would be a waste if a (ex) 100 capacity coop only held 10 birds. Anyways, can i safely and easily keep two roos and have them not kill each other (or fight all together). Also we may enter breeding shows eventually, and more roos means we can have some breeding going on with purebreds (one of the roos is hybrid, other is a beautiful leghorn).
