My flock tripled!

[StephEW86]

Welcome to BYC. How are the roosters working out ?

Our roosters are so much fun! We haven’t had any picking or serious pecking order activity with either of them. One is already leader of the flock and has started his cocka doodle (no ‘doo’ Yet).

 

[N F C]

It's nice to have you here, glad you're enjoying the roosters!

 

[Hope Hughes]

Hello
Welcome to BYC!!
So glad to have you here!!
Thanks for sharing your story!!
There are many people on here that are ready to help in anyway they can!
The learning center also has alot of great information on it as well!
Enjoy!​

 

[rebrascora]

Hi and welcome

It sounds like your cockerels are young and have perhaps not yet reached their hormonal adolescent stage. In a flock of only 12 having more than one young male could be hard on your young pullets. The older hens should hopefully keep them in check for a while but do monitor the situation closely as things can get out of hand rapidly once their hormones kick in. If you have polish hens and pullets in with large fowl cockerels they will be particularly vulnerable and would be best separated. Apologies if you have already research and laid plans to cover these possible issues, but better to be forewarned as have a tragedy to deal with because you were unaware of the risks.
Many people think their young cockerels are so sweet and then suddenly they hit puberty and have a personality change, particularly when they are brought up in a flock without a dominant mature rooster to keep them in line. Of course they may be perfect gentlemen and remain so but it is difficult for them when that testosterone kicks in.

Very best wishes

Barbara

 

[StephEW86]

I appreciate the tips and all the welcome!

 

[blackdust951]

helloand welcome to backyard chickens!thank you for joining us

 

[StephEW86]

Elsa

Elsa and Heihei

Hi and welcome

It sounds like your cockerels are young and have perhaps not yet reached their hormonal adolescent stage. In a flock of only 12 having more than one young male could be hard on your young pullets. The older hens should hopefully keep them in check for a while but do monitor the situation closely as things can get out of hand rapidly once their hormones kick in. If you have polish hens and pullets in with large fowl cockerels they will be particularly vulnerable and would be best separated. Apologies if you have already research and laid plans to cover these possible issues, but better to be forewarned as have a tragedy to deal with because you were unaware of the risks.
Many people think their young cockerels are so sweet and then suddenly they hit puberty and have a personality change, particularly when they are brought up in a flock without a dominant mature rooster to keep them in line. Of course they may be perfect gentlemen and remain so but it is difficult for them when that testosterone kicks in.

Very best wishes

Barbara

Thank you so much for your help. I’m wondering if i could pick your brain about a few things. I will post pictures and try my best to make sense.
As stated above my flock tripled and that includes 2 roosters and they are both polish (black one is Charlie and the red one is HeiHei) although heihei seems to be much smaller than Charlie and seems to be loosing tail feathers. I’m wondering if maybe they are different age or maybe even different breed. One of the other hens we bought is a Silkie and I’m afraid her and HeiHei won’t be allowed to thrive. We currently still have the new 6 separate from my OG flock of 3 great layers.

The other day we found this great free wooden playhouse which we will be adding to our Chicken Mansion. With the new addition that makes for 2 coops and 2 runs and we are going to be adding a composting area.

So my questions are:
1) Wtf is Heihei?!

2) Should we separate Elsa the Silkie and Heihei from the rest of the flock?

3) is there anything else we should be worried about or keeping a causious eye on?

 

[rebrascora]

Hi
Firstly, Elsa isn't a silkie. She looks to be more like a sultan.
HeiHei appears to be a cockerel but I'm not sure how good his polish breeding is... I'm no expert on polish or sultans for that matter but I can say quite confidently that Elsa is not a silkie.
What other breed of cockerel(s) do you have? ....it is not clear from your previous posts unless I am missing something.
In the second photo, HeiHei looks to be sick.... it might just be the way he is standing.
Have you been careful about quarantining the new arrivals? Chickens can harbour many illnesses and viruses whilst appearing relatively healthy and it is so easy to bring a nasty disease into your flock by introducing new chickens and very difficult, if not impossible to get rid of some of them (I speak from experience here!!)

Are Elsa and HeiHei your only crested birds? Elsa might get over mated if she is kept with HeiHei and no other females. You would have to try it and see. She might do fine in with other hens but I would be apprehensive for her if she was in with a large fowl cockerel as well. You also need to be very careful about introducing new birds to a flock of hens even after quarantine, as sometimes the pecking order can be brutal and crested birds have vaulted skulls that are more prone to injury and brain damage if pecked. Also because they look unusual, the other birds are more likely to peck their crest. Males hold onto the back of the head to help balance whilst they mate. Young cockerels are less balanced than an experienced roo and young pullets don't know what to do and often struggle to get away from them, which is when injury (sometimes scalping) can occur.

Were there any specific reasons for getting some cockerels? They really change the flock dynamic and not always for the better so without knowing your goals, it's difficult to advise.

An older experienced rooster is a better bet with young birds. They are normally much easier on the hens and you have more idea of temperament than getting adolescent males that are unpredictable and often insatiable with their sexual appetite.

 

[StephEW86]

Hi
Firstly, Elsa isn't a silkie. She looks to be more like a sultan.
HeiHei appears to be a cockerel but I'm not sure how good his polish breeding is... I'm no expert on polish or sultans for that matter but I can say quite confidently that Elsa is not a silkie.
What other breed of cockerel(s) do you have? ....it is not clear from your previous posts unless I am missing something.
In the second photo, HeiHei looks to be sick.... it might just be the way he is standing.
Have you been careful about quarantining the new arrivals? Chickens can harbour many illnesses and viruses whilst appearing relatively healthy and it is so easy to bring a nasty disease into your flock by introducing new chickens and very difficult, if not impossible to get rid of some of them (I speak from experience here!!)

Are Elsa and HeiHei your only crested birds? Elsa might get over mated if she is kept with HeiHei and no other females. You would have to try it and see. She might do fine in with other hens but I would be apprehensive for her if she was in with a large fowl cockerel as well. You also need to be very careful about introducing new birds to a flock of hens even after quarantine, as sometimes the pecking order can be brutal and crested birds have vaulted skulls that are more prone to injury and brain damage if pecked. Also because they look unusual, the other birds are more likely to peck their crest. Males hold onto the back of the head to help balance whilst they mate. Young cockerels are less balanced than an experienced roo and young pullets don't know what to do and often struggle to get away from them, which is when injury (sometimes scalping) can occur.

Were there any specific reasons for getting some cockerels? They really change the flock dynamic and not always for the better so without knowing your goals, it's difficult to advise.

An older experienced rooster is a better bet with young birds. They are normally much easier on the hens and you have more idea of temperament than getting adolescent males that are unpredictable and often insatiable with their sexual appetite.

Thank you again for all of your help! She’s a sultan, ok...... we would like to expand our turnout with our flock, meaning eggs, fertile eggs, chicks, etc.... We went to look at the different types and ages of birds they had and out of nowhere *BAM* chicken math! We came home with 6 more chickens.

All of ours came in together and looked healthy other than one of Elsa’s feathers got ripped out and had some blood but looked ok. In the same group there was another polish cockerel (Charlie) and is much larger than Heihei. I’ll post more pictures from my phone after this gets posted.

We will be confining Heihei today as well, he’s had explosive diarrhea and is a little lethargic and has been sneezing a little. All the new ones have been separated from my 3 original hens and we will be setting up the new coop so we can completely clean the run that we made into a makeshift coop.


The only pecking order behavior that we’ve seen is between (this is gonna be funny and mind you a 4 year old named them except 1) Elsa and Anna (I’m not sure what she is either). I’ll insert a picture after of the behavior. We also have enough room to build everyone their own retreat if things start to go downhill.

 

[StephEW86]

First pic is an overall of the new flock

2nd pic is Charlie our other cockerel

3rd is Anna and Elsa