My Beloved Roo Is Becoming A Problem...despite all attempts to turn him around.

[lazy gardener]

I would get rid of that bird or pen him up. Very dangerous behavior with a small child involved. It only takes once for a spur to get in the eye for irreversible damage to be done.

By allowing the rooster to even approach the toddler with a pane of glass between them, you are allowing him to continue his aggressive dominating behavior. It's only a matter of time before he does injure this child. And a child in a stroller is especially vulnerable. The child is restrained in a face forward position. I beg you to get rid of this rooster.

 

[MamaDoodle]

I don't want to start problems on this thread. . . . .

But you do realize he can put a toddler"s eye out don't you?

Yes, and I said I try not to let them in the yard at the same time. He is normally in the run, but comes out when I'm not working and can stand in the yard with the chickens since we live in the woods. If he isn't out, my daughter is out. Though sometimes no one can watch her and she has to come out with me, and I have a broom in hand.

I would get rid of that bird or pen him up.  Very dangerous behavior with a small child involved.  It only takes once for a spur to get in the eye for irreversible damage to be done.

I know, but until I got roosters, I was losing hens to predators. We have ten different kinds in our woods, especially now close to winter. If he is eaten by an animal but I keep my hens, he will have served his great purpose. I may not like his human attacks, and I do my best to prevent them, and have for weeks now, but he is greatly valued here.

 

[MamaDoodle]

By allowing the rooster to even approach the toddler with a pane of glass between them, you are allowing him to continue his aggressive dominating behavior.  It's only a matter of time before he does injure this child.  And a child in a stroller is especially vulnerable.  The child is restrained in a face forward position.  I beg you to get rid of this rooster.

Thank you for your concern, I really do appreciate it. But I am not going to get rid of a rooster who is here to be as flock protective/aggressive as he is.

His purpose is to keep my hens safe, and he has done a good job thus far, and hopefully will continue until his death whether it be by old age or taken by an animal in place of my hens. I have no use for roosters other than protection, as we live in the woods. My neighbors do the same to protect their own hens.

I have kept them separate for weeks, and intend to keep it up as much as possible.

 

[Rettarain2]

Thank you all fir support and humor. This bird adventure is a blast!!

 

[suebee]

I am going through the same thing with a new rooster I bought. I named him "Snot" for a reason. The former owner told me he was kind of malicious and I'm finding out after weeks of trying to rehabilitate him that my efforts are failing. After ten years of experience I am proud to call myself a chicken whisperer but I feel defeated with this little guy.

Relentless flogs and biting. I tried the picking up, boot kick, broom, yelling "NO", etc, but nothing so far has worked. His flogging is gentle compared to his bite. He tries to inflict the worst pain by his bite. Luckily he is a silkie so he doesn't fly up at me.

I will breed him and then sell him. Here's just a tiny sample of my injuries. I have bruises all over my arms and legs from this little beast! I feel like a failure.... I was so confident I could fix him.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/content/type/61/id/6003303/width/350/height/700[/IMG
[IMG]https://www.backyardchickens.com/content/type/61/id/6003299/width/350/height/700

 

[chynasparks]

Those are some bad injuries. May I ask, won't breeding him breed in those traits to the offspring? I've read on this forum that aggression is passed on in genes

 

[suebee]

I've never had an aggressive rooster so don't know if it will pass down to offspring. I'm leaning towards the viscous dog theory. Are they born that way or is it how they were raised and treated after birth? I guess it will be my little experiment. I'll know by next summer when his offspring are grown.

 

[guernsi]

I've never had an aggressive rooster so don't know if it will pass down to offspring. I'm leaning towards the viscous dog theory. Are they born that way or is it how they were raised and treated after birth? I guess it will be my little experiment. I'll know by next summer when his offspring are grown.

Yes, the aggression will be passed on to future generations. Breeding this one is not a good idea !

And I feel for you and your bruises. That is how my arms and legs looked when I initially started this post. I felt I had tried everything, and like you, felt I had failed. One of the posters here had some very helpful advice, and it is hidden in 8 pages of posts, so I'll paste it below. I am having success with my rooster, and all attacks have stopped. (My rooster was vicious biter too). I tried for more than a year to accomplish what I have in the last couple of weeks. Don't lose hope !

Original response from olychickenguy:

Okay, I admit I haven't read any of the replies - only the main post, so forgive me for butting in, but I'm on a library computer and only have eight minutes to outline this.

I rescue roosters. I've rescued aggressive roosters and rehabilitated them. I have a fighting cock that now lives happily with twenty other roosters and a turkey ( tom ). I have a rooster that put his previous owner in the hospital and is now a doll - literally, small children can pick him up and hug him without incident. Most of my birds I get because they were "beginning" to behave aggressively, either charging or jumping at people, but are sweethearts with me.

Just a quick note - I've developed my own training and taming techniques based on Cesar Millan's ( the Dog Whisperer ) techniques, so if you're familiar with him, you'll see a lot of parallels with what I do compared to what he does. Millan's techniques are basically made up of two ingredients: Calm + assertive energy AND dog psychology. Firstly, we replace "dog" with "chicken", and as I've learned "chicken" can be just about any ground-dwelling galliform, so far as psychology goes. In my experience turkeys, peafowl, pheasants, and quail all respond well to my techniques.

So firstly, we MUST understand what "calm" is and BECOME it - by fearing your beloved pet, you are feeding his OWN insecurities! HE IS AFRAID OF YOU, and his aggression is naught but a means of GETTING YOU AWAY FROM HIM BECAUSE YOUR FEAR SCARES HIM. Then when you back down or act fearful yourself, he senses that you are failing at being a dominant flock member, and in the minds of animals there are only two options: Dominance, or submission. There is no grey area, there is no "freedom" at being given "free will" or "options" - this just confuses animals, and adds to their neurosis. If you're not being dominant, he HAS to fill the void - this is how it is for ALL animals!

( Woo! The library staff was kind and gave me another hour, so HERE WE GO!! )

But let's look at domestication, what it is, what it means, and how it affects a domesticated animal first, shall we? Domestication is a process that takes place over many, many generations, and it creates a physiological and psychological variant on the wild animal that the domesticated animal is descended from. The domestication process actually creates a psychological and physical DEPENDENCY on humans! The animals CANNOT live a psychologically fulfilled life without humans! Part of that dependency is that it is bred into the animal to look up to humans as dominant figureheads of their lives, but many humans of modern times FAIL TO FULFILL THIS ROLE. That means the animal becomes neurotic and attempts to fill the role themselves, which often manifests as aggression and obsessive behaviors, such as feather-picking, chewing, obsessively beating up other animals, turning circles obsessively, urinating or defecating in areas they usually wouldn't, OCD-like behaviors such as moving all bedding to a certain area, collecting and stashing toys, and so forth. Almost all "odd" animal behaviors are rooted in neurosis of some sort.

How do we know that domestication causes physiological and psychological changes? Well, there are many, many ways we know this, but the experiment that stuck out the most to me was a Russian experiment with silver foxes. Russian scientists wanted to try to reproduce the conditions of wolves evolving into dogs, so they took silver foxes and bred them - initially STRICTLY for good temperament. As they bred some foxes for specifically calm traits, they also bred foxes for specifically aggressive traits just to see what would happen. The aggressive foxes had no specific changes whatsoever, but the calm and submissive foxes began to change! They changed colour, their behavior became more tame and dog-like, and they even began to bark and whine like dogs! These foxes became happy and excited to see their human care-takers, eager to please, and enjoyed being handled. For more information, I just found the Wikipedia article here: [link]

That being said, chickens are domesticated animals, and domesticated animals NEED HUMAN INTERVENTION to live happy, fulfilled lives. We MUST be dominant, we MUST take up our roles as not only their care-givers, but their livelihood-givers! WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THESE ANIMALS, it is our JOB to not only take care of them physically, but psychologically as well.

So how do you show dominance? There are many people who believe in the archaic techniques of pain = submission. Look at capitol punishment - the psychology behind it was that torture created a healthy fear and respect of authority. After all, would YOU want YOUR hand cut off for stealing a measly apple? Is that apple worth your hand? But again and again sociological studies have showed that firm but gentle discipline works better, brings up moral and loyalty, and supports self-esteem of lower-ranking people than harsh, iron-fisted punishment. And here's some vocabulary for you: "Punishment" is from emotion, it is based in anger or fear and has no logic, and is thus difficult to learn from. "Discipline" is methodical, and easily equated to certain things. Imagine a parent who disciplines their children for stealing a cookie from a cookie jar by putting them into a time-out for five minutes - and does this EVERY SINGLE TIME the child steals a cookie from the jar, versus a parent who sometimes lets the cookie-thief slip away "unnoticed", and other times flies into a rage and hits the child, but there is no consistency to this punishment and the fear created IS NOT RESPECT - it's only fear, and fear makes us want to figure out how to CIRCUMVENT it, not respect and avoid it.

So you have to be firm and CONSISTENT. You have to give the same discipline for the same behavior, no matter what. Consistency and patience are what it takes to form long-lasting and strong bonds and relationships with both animals and people. You want your animal to respect you, not fear you - fear is a ticking time-bomb, and though the animal COULD go its whole life never attacking you again, it could also cause the animal to self-destruct, psychologically-speaking. They could just snap one day, or in their fear they could see an opportunity one day and go all out in attack-mode. Fear is NOT a sustainable approach for training ANY animal - humans included! But an excess of cuddles and love only helps to ENCOURAGE the neurotic behavior, too, because when the animal is tense and aggravated, and you then give it praise, treats, and physical contact, you are sending this message to your pet: "I like you in this state of mind. Look at how much I like when you behave like this! I'm giving you treats for behaving like this!" You are NOT comforting your animal, and you are NOT calming them down - you're just telling them that it's totally okay and cool to be upset and neurotic.

I believe in a healthy balance of both positive and negative reinforcement. The same outcome can, ultimately, be achieved through either pure positive OR negative reinforcement, but without balancing them both, it will take much longer and your success isn't guaranteed. My "negative" reinforcement is a way to "disagree" with a behavior - I'm not beating the animal, or specifically LOOKING for reasons to discipline it, but I will CLEARLY tell the animal that I AM NOT PLEASED with its behavior, and I won't be shy about it, either. My "positive" reinforcement is a way to "agree" with a behavior - to tell the animal that what it is doing is good, and I appreciate it. Both reinforcement techniques are used in ways similar to how chickens would interact with each other ( again, Millan's idea is to use "dog language" to speak to dogs, so we're doing the same here with chickens ).

If I want to disagree with a chicken, I do to my chickens what they do to each other - they peck or bite, but watch them and you'll find that it's usually not very hard, and usually just once does the trick. I use one or two fingers, and jab at the bird I'm disciplining, or gently "kick" them ( I use my toes or the toe of my shoe to nudge at them or push them a little bit so they get the hint ). I only "hit" hard enough for them to NOTICE. A gentle touch isn't going to get much attention, but a single, little jab is usually enough to redirect their attention - and that's all we're doing when disciplining, is redirecting their attention from their bad behavior. If they're truly terrorizing me, someone else, or something else, I grab the bird, pinch the skin on the back of their neck ( they have a scruff like a cat, so you're NOT PINCHING TO HURT, just to get a hold of their head so you can control where it is ), and while ALSO holding the bird's back ( if you hold JUST the neck or head, they can seriously injure themselves trying to get away from you ), and I hold them still until they calm down. Did I say "until they stop struggling"? No, I said "calm down" - and that's a key, because the first SEVERAL times you do this, they'll have NO IDEA what you're doing, because you've never done it before, so they'll struggle A LOT, and once they stop struggling, you go to adjust your grip or let go, and they WILL start to fight all over again! Keep hold of them until you can SEE that they are breathing easier, their heart beat is normal, and they are CALM. You may have to let go and hold onto them several times in one "pick up" as they get used to this form of discipline. The other thing I do is if the bird is prone to biting, I might flick their beak - again, we're NOT TRYING TO HURT THE BIRD, just get their attention. If the bird bites again, it is NOT because you failed at getting their attention - it's that they're not used to you being dominant, so they are TESTING whether or not you really mean what you're saying. And oh yes - they will test you! It is ingrained in animals to ALWAYS test their boundaries, so this is a LIFE-LONG, LIFE-STYLE change you are making to yourself to devote yourself to being a calm, assertive person EVERYWHERE ALWAYS. Honestly, it will make your WHOLE LIFE a heck of a lot easier, though, because even humans are animals, and even humans will be inclined to follow you if you lead.

Once you are confident that you have disciplined your chicken, he has understood his discipline, and has calmed down, begin gently stroking his cheeks, or neck. For beginners, the neck as a gentle "neck massage" is probably the best thing for you to do - chickens love neck massages, and you will know he's happy when his belly begins to tremble, or he gently picks up his wing so that you can scratch the underside of the bend of his wing. As your relationship grows, begin to gently stroke his cheek, around his eyes, his earlobes, wattles, and comb, and they LOVE when you scratch their ears! I actually stick my finger right into their ears and gently rub in circles right on the opening of their ears, and they'll close their eyes and tilt their heads for you. If they shake their heads, they're not upset, they're just getting used to the contact - if they close their eyes, tremble their bellies, or gently lift their wings when you scratch at them, you know you're doing something right. If they squeal, or "purr" ( it sounds like a cross between a pigeon cooing and a cat purring ) you REALLY know you're doing something right! Once he comes to enjoy his being picked up, begin to feed him treats WHILE holding him! If he bites your hand, just remember that this isn't aggressive, he just doesn't know the difference between your hand and the treat. I've taught my boys the difference by gently bopping at their beaks or heads when they accidentally bite my hand, and once you have a solid relationship with them, they'll be aware of your mood and if I say, "Ow!" or, "That hurt!" they'll actually stop and peck at what's in my hands more gently.

Another thing to do with an aggressive bird is to NEVER, EVER back away from them! When you move AWAY from the bird, you create an opening that says, "COME AT ME!!" The bird sees this as a submissive gesture, and will attempt to claim dominance upon it. Instead, when the bird comes at you, jumps at you, or what-have-you, move TOWARDS it. Always towards it! I have some house mates that my birds have begun to challenge because they are very submissive and afraid of the birds, but we've all experienced a great deal of success when I taught them to always move towards the bird. I also tell them that if they're afraid the bird is going to jump at them, to kick out their feet at the birds like a goose-stepping march - that creates a distraction, and obstructs the air-space for the bird to jump in. The problem with this approach is that a lot of people unconsciously lean back when they put their foot back down, which is moving away from the bird, which opens them up for attack. Keep moving forward, keep marching like a dork, and you'll see the confusion almost immediately as the bird puffs up, flaps, turns in circles, runs away a few steps only to come back at you, then run away again, but once the bird flattens its feathers and runs away without intent of coming back, you've "won" the challenge and can stop looking like someone from Monty Python making fun of Nazis. Also, raise your arms and "flap" them - it'll make YOU look bigger, too, but be careful that if you're not FEELING dominant, this can come off as a challenge, and never continue to follow the bird once he's submitted, because then you'll be seen as trying to instigate a full-on fight.

So to summarize, be CALM and ASSERTIVE, which creates what animals recognize as a "dominant energy". Always move forward - never away. Discipline to disagree with bad behaviours, and give affection and treats to agree with good behaviours. Sounds easy enough, but it takes PATIENCE, PATIENCE, PATIENCE. Oh, and some more patience. And CONSISTENCY. Now go out there and PRACTISE your new knowledge, techniques, and abilities, and adjust accordingly to your personal situation!

Good luck, and I'll try to check back in now and again to see how things are going.

Edited by OlyChickenGuy - 9/28/13 at 1:18pm

 

[Penny Hen]

Yes, the aggression will be passed on to future generations. Breeding this one is not a good idea !

And I feel for you and your bruises. That is how my arms and legs looked when I initially started this post. I felt I had tried everything, and like you, felt I had failed. One of the posters here had some very helpful advice, and it is hidden in 8 pages of posts, so I'll paste it below. I am having success with my rooster, and all attacks have stopped. (My rooster was vicious biter too). I tried for more than a year to accomplish what I have in the last couple of weeks. Don't lose hope !

Original response from olychickenguy:

Okay, I admit I haven't read any of the replies - only the main post, so forgive me for butting in, but I'm on a library computer and only have eight minutes to outline this.

I rescue roosters. I've rescued aggressive roosters and rehabilitated them. I have a fighting cock that now lives happily with twenty other roosters and a turkey ( tom ). I have a rooster that put his previous owner in the hospital and is now a doll - literally, small children can pick him up and hug him without incident. Most of my birds I get because they were "beginning" to behave aggressively, either charging or jumping at people, but are sweethearts with me.

Just a quick note - I've developed my own training and taming techniques based on Cesar Millan's ( the Dog Whisperer ) techniques, so if you're familiar with him, you'll see a lot of parallels with what I do compared to what he does. Millan's techniques are basically made up of two ingredients: Calm + assertive energy AND dog psychology. Firstly, we replace "dog" with "chicken", and as I've learned "chicken" can be just about any ground-dwelling galliform, so far as psychology goes. In my experience turkeys, peafowl, pheasants, and quail all respond well to my techniques.

So firstly, we MUST understand what "calm" is and BECOME it - by fearing your beloved pet, you are feeding his OWN insecurities! HE IS AFRAID OF YOU, and his aggression is naught but a means of GETTING YOU AWAY FROM HIM BECAUSE YOUR FEAR SCARES HIM. Then when you back down or act fearful yourself, he senses that you are failing at being a dominant flock member, and in the minds of animals there are only two options: Dominance, or submission. There is no grey area, there is no "freedom" at being given "free will" or "options" - this just confuses animals, and adds to their neurosis. If you're not being dominant, he HAS to fill the void - this is how it is for ALL animals!

( Woo! The library staff was kind and gave me another hour, so HERE WE GO!! )

But let's look at domestication, what it is, what it means, and how it affects a domesticated animal first, shall we? Domestication is a process that takes place over many, many generations, and it creates a physiological and psychological variant on the wild animal that the domesticated animal is descended from. The domestication process actually creates a psychological and physical DEPENDENCY on humans! The animals CANNOT live a psychologically fulfilled life without humans! Part of that dependency is that it is bred into the animal to look up to humans as dominant figureheads of their lives, but many humans of modern times FAIL TO FULFILL THIS ROLE. That means the animal becomes neurotic and attempts to fill the role themselves, which often manifests as aggression and obsessive behaviors, such as feather-picking, chewing, obsessively beating up other animals, turning circles obsessively, urinating or defecating in areas they usually wouldn't, OCD-like behaviors such as moving all bedding to a certain area, collecting and stashing toys, and so forth. Almost all "odd" animal behaviors are rooted in neurosis of some sort.

How do we know that domestication causes physiological and psychological changes? Well, there are many, many ways we know this, but the experiment that stuck out the most to me was a Russian experiment with silver foxes. Russian scientists wanted to try to reproduce the conditions of wolves evolving into dogs, so they took silver foxes and bred them - initially STRICTLY for good temperament. As they bred some foxes for specifically calm traits, they also bred foxes for specifically aggressive traits just to see what would happen. The aggressive foxes had no specific changes whatsoever, but the calm and submissive foxes began to change! They changed colour, their behavior became more tame and dog-like, and they even began to bark and whine like dogs! These foxes became happy and excited to see their human care-takers, eager to please, and enjoyed being handled. For more information, I just found the Wikipedia article here: [link]

That being said, chickens are domesticated animals, and domesticated animals NEED HUMAN INTERVENTION to live happy, fulfilled lives. We MUST be dominant, we MUST take up our roles as not only their care-givers, but their livelihood-givers! WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THESE ANIMALS, it is our JOB to not only take care of them physically, but psychologically as well.

So how do you show dominance? There are many people who believe in the archaic techniques of pain = submission. Look at capitol punishment - the psychology behind it was that torture created a healthy fear and respect of authority. After all, would YOU want YOUR hand cut off for stealing a measly apple? Is that apple worth your hand? But again and again sociological studies have showed that firm but gentle discipline works better, brings up moral and loyalty, and supports self-esteem of lower-ranking people than harsh, iron-fisted punishment. And here's some vocabulary for you: "Punishment" is from emotion, it is based in anger or fear and has no logic, and is thus difficult to learn from. "Discipline" is methodical, and easily equated to certain things. Imagine a parent who disciplines their children for stealing a cookie from a cookie jar by putting them into a time-out for five minutes - and does this EVERY SINGLE TIME the child steals a cookie from the jar, versus a parent who sometimes lets the cookie-thief slip away "unnoticed", and other times flies into a rage and hits the child, but there is no consistency to this punishment and the fear created IS NOT RESPECT - it's only fear, and fear makes us want to figure out how to CIRCUMVENT it, not respect and avoid it.

So you have to be firm and CONSISTENT. You have to give the same discipline for the same behavior, no matter what. Consistency and patience are what it takes to form long-lasting and strong bonds and relationships with both animals and people. You want your animal to respect you, not fear you - fear is a ticking time-bomb, and though the animal COULD go its whole life never attacking you again, it could also cause the animal to self-destruct, psychologically-speaking. They could just snap one day, or in their fear they could see an opportunity one day and go all out in attack-mode. Fear is NOT a sustainable approach for training ANY animal - humans included! But an excess of cuddles and love only helps to ENCOURAGE the neurotic behavior, too, because when the animal is tense and aggravated, and you then give it praise, treats, and physical contact, you are sending this message to your pet: "I like you in this state of mind. Look at how much I like when you behave like this! I'm giving you treats for behaving like this!" You are NOT comforting your animal, and you are NOT calming them down - you're just telling them that it's totally okay and cool to be upset and neurotic.

I believe in a healthy balance of both positive and negative reinforcement. The same outcome can, ultimately, be achieved through either pure positive OR negative reinforcement, but without balancing them both, it will take much longer and your success isn't guaranteed. My "negative" reinforcement is a way to "disagree" with a behavior - I'm not beating the animal, or specifically LOOKING for reasons to discipline it, but I will CLEARLY tell the animal that I AM NOT PLEASED with its behavior, and I won't be shy about it, either. My "positive" reinforcement is a way to "agree" with a behavior - to tell the animal that what it is doing is good, and I appreciate it. Both reinforcement techniques are used in ways similar to how chickens would interact with each other ( again, Millan's idea is to use "dog language" to speak to dogs, so we're doing the same here with chickens ).

If I want to disagree with a chicken, I do to my chickens what they do to each other - they peck or bite, but watch them and you'll find that it's usually not very hard, and usually just once does the trick. I use one or two fingers, and jab at the bird I'm disciplining, or gently "kick" them ( I use my toes or the toe of my shoe to nudge at them or push them a little bit so they get the hint ). I only "hit" hard enough for them to NOTICE. A gentle touch isn't going to get much attention, but a single, little jab is usually enough to redirect their attention - and that's all we're doing when disciplining, is redirecting their attention from their bad behavior. If they're truly terrorizing me, someone else, or something else, I grab the bird, pinch the skin on the back of their neck ( they have a scruff like a cat, so you're NOT PINCHING TO HURT, just to get a hold of their head so you can control where it is ), and while ALSO holding the bird's back ( if you hold JUST the neck or head, they can seriously injure themselves trying to get away from you ), and I hold them still until they calm down. Did I say "until they stop struggling"? No, I said "calm down" - and that's a key, because the first SEVERAL times you do this, they'll have NO IDEA what you're doing, because you've never done it before, so they'll struggle A LOT, and once they stop struggling, you go to adjust your grip or let go, and they WILL start to fight all over again! Keep hold of them until you can SEE that they are breathing easier, their heart beat is normal, and they are CALM. You may have to let go and hold onto them several times in one "pick up" as they get used to this form of discipline. The other thing I do is if the bird is prone to biting, I might flick their beak - again, we're NOT TRYING TO HURT THE BIRD, just get their attention. If the bird bites again, it is NOT because you failed at getting their attention - it's that they're not used to you being dominant, so they are TESTING whether or not you really mean what you're saying. And oh yes - they will test you! It is ingrained in animals to ALWAYS test their boundaries, so this is a LIFE-LONG, LIFE-STYLE change you are making to yourself to devote yourself to being a calm, assertive person EVERYWHERE ALWAYS. Honestly, it will make your WHOLE LIFE a heck of a lot easier, though, because even humans are animals, and even humans will be inclined to follow you if you lead.

Once you are confident that you have disciplined your chicken, he has understood his discipline, and has calmed down, begin gently stroking his cheeks, or neck. For beginners, the neck as a gentle "neck massage" is probably the best thing for you to do - chickens love neck massages, and you will know he's happy when his belly begins to tremble, or he gently picks up his wing so that you can scratch the underside of the bend of his wing. As your relationship grows, begin to gently stroke his cheek, around his eyes, his earlobes, wattles, and comb, and they LOVE when you scratch their ears! I actually stick my finger right into their ears and gently rub in circles right on the opening of their ears, and they'll close their eyes and tilt their heads for you. If they shake their heads, they're not upset, they're just getting used to the contact - if they close their eyes, tremble their bellies, or gently lift their wings when you scratch at them, you know you're doing something right. If they squeal, or "purr" ( it sounds like a cross between a pigeon cooing and a cat purring ) you REALLY know you're doing something right! Once he comes to enjoy his being picked up, begin to feed him treats WHILE holding him! If he bites your hand, just remember that this isn't aggressive, he just doesn't know the difference between your hand and the treat. I've taught my boys the difference by gently bopping at their beaks or heads when they accidentally bite my hand, and once you have a solid relationship with them, they'll be aware of your mood and if I say, "Ow!" or, "That hurt!" they'll actually stop and peck at what's in my hands more gently.

Another thing to do with an aggressive bird is to NEVER, EVER back away from them! When you move AWAY from the bird, you create an opening that says, "COME AT ME!!" The bird sees this as a submissive gesture, and will attempt to claim dominance upon it. Instead, when the bird comes at you, jumps at you, or what-have-you, move TOWARDS it. Always towards it! I have some house mates that my birds have begun to challenge because they are very submissive and afraid of the birds, but we've all experienced a great deal of success when I taught them to always move towards the bird. I also tell them that if they're afraid the bird is going to jump at them, to kick out their feet at the birds like a goose-stepping march - that creates a distraction, and obstructs the air-space for the bird to jump in. The problem with this approach is that a lot of people unconsciously lean back when they put their foot back down, which is moving away from the bird, which opens them up for attack. Keep moving forward, keep marching like a dork, and you'll see the confusion almost immediately as the bird puffs up, flaps, turns in circles, runs away a few steps only to come back at you, then run away again, but once the bird flattens its feathers and runs away without intent of coming back, you've "won" the challenge and can stop looking like someone from Monty Python making fun of Nazis. Also, raise your arms and "flap" them - it'll make YOU look bigger, too, but be careful that if you're not FEELING dominant, this can come off as a challenge, and never continue to follow the bird once he's submitted, because then you'll be seen as trying to instigate a full-on fight.

So to summarize, be CALM and ASSERTIVE, which creates what animals recognize as a "dominant energy". Always move forward - never away. Discipline to disagree with bad behaviours, and give affection and treats to agree with good behaviours. Sounds easy enough, but it takes PATIENCE, PATIENCE, PATIENCE. Oh, and some more patience. And CONSISTENCY. Now go out there and PRACTISE your new knowledge, techniques, and abilities, and adjust accordingly to your personal situation!

Good luck, and I'll try to check back in now and again to see how things are going.

Edited by OlyChickenGuy - 9/28/13 at 1:18pm

Thanks for reposting this. I had missed this post and it is a gem. OlyChickenGuy you need to write a book. Seriously. I would buy it.

I have a question. I went a little overboard with one of my roosters and now I can't get close to him. He was a bully and caused the death of a younger cockrel back in the summer (he starved to death because Rufous wouldn't let him eat). Then this last month when the pullets wouldn't give him the time of day, he would run down this other younger cockrel and use him instead of a pullet. I was setting up separate quarters for Redwing when he decided he has had enough and moved to the woods. I haven't seen him in about 3 weeks now. Don't know if he is dead or alive. He is too scared to crow and draw the attention of Rufous. It made me real angry because he was so sweet. I gave Rufous some of his own medicine. Grabbed him off the perch, tapped his butt a few times, pinned him to the ground, pinched his neck skin and pulled some feathers (just like he did) then released him and chased him all over for about 10 minutes.

Well now he is totally terrified of me. Further he has begun to crow excessively. Now my husband gets up at three to go to work. As soon as the alarm goes off he crows a few times and then settles down in about 15 minutes and doesn't crow again until around 5:30 when the sky lightens. Two days ago he began to crow at 3 and crowed non-stop until 7am. I was ready to send him to freezer camp. On the other hand he is very vigilant. The possoms are not likely to be able to sneak up on the chickens while he is watching. He is also very beautiful, a deep orange/red duckwing with midnight purple on the wings and saddle and a beetle green tail. I would give him to a 4-Her if his behavior was better. Or keep him myself for his watchdog qualities. I find I like him and want to strangle him between one breath and the next.

 

[Coralee]

I have 4 roosters, 3 Cochin, 1 sex-link/Dominique cross. The large roo has always been a mellow fellow; I can go in the big chicken run in housedress & flip flops, no problem. Two of the other Cochin roos are also good guys. I am having a bit of a problem with the youngest roo who is 3 1/2 months old. He was hand raised due to a super broody hen who would set eggs but not raise the hatched chicks. (I could do a whole separate thread on that problem) Anyway, I brought the day old chick inside & raised it. He was fine & quite well tempered until recently. Then he started bowing up & pecking & biting. I have used Oly's calming method to good effect, but I do have to reinforce the lesson (I am #1 chicken). I think in my young roos case, when he grows up he will be a sweet guy like his dad, who is so mellow I can literally look him eye to eye while he is roosting. I hope everyone with roo problems find a solution other than "Siberia".