My roo tried to ...um you know

[pixiechic]

One of my roos is trying to mate already, and he's only 9 weeks old. He jumps chicks his age, who are much too young to lay, and he's even tried it with my adult cornish cross Lucille, who is easily three times his size! We subsequently named him Leroy, as in "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown." He's a legend in his own mind.

 

[Jennyhaschicks]

Well then. I guess my Bingo is trying to mate. I saw him take a couple hens and slam their heads down with his beak around the back of their necks. He sure wasn't kind about it. He's 10 weeks btw.

 

[Heather08]

I think its so funny to see who the roosters are attracted to, I have 4 roosters and they are all around the same age and they have all picked a favorite hen LOL, and the smallest rooster(teeny bantam* spark plug we call him) of all has picked the largest hen(silver wyndotsp?) as one of his ... the youngest rooster ( he is the biggest Gold sex link) he has been smitten with my EE hen we call chicken hawk, she is scared *sh***less* of him, if he is outside, she is inside , she avoids him like the plague... One of my cochin feathers footed dudes has taken a likin to one of the gold link girls, he grabs hold of her and chases her ... they are hysterical. We are soooo close to egg layin time, they are about 18-19 weeks now and Im sitting with baited breath for eggs , I stand at the coop door with my carton tellin them to get busy! I need some kick back for the 1000s Ive put into the coop and ckicken food and feeders.

If the eggs are fertilized you can still leave them out on the counter? I am totaly unfamilar with this concept and had no clue you could leave them out, im sorta freeked out about doing that , are you sure there is no risk of somethign?

 

[Wildsky]

My Roo has so far IGNORED the younger hens (they're around 15-16 weeks I think)
I did see him trying to LOOK cool - fluttering and dancing around one yesterday... but I've never seen him do anything with THOSE particular girls up till then.

(Perhaps my roo is too busy to deal with teenagers... he does have 11 other hens to take care of)

 

[Lammie]

Just doing what chickens do... In this case, the roosters are probably trying to decide the pecking order.

 

[harldane]

I have one rooster (RIR) and one pullet (EE) left from a kindergarten incubation project - rooster #2 met the ax a couple weeks ago once he started chasing us around the backyard and crowing incessantly.

The remaining 2 chicks are now 17 weeks old. I really don't *want* fertilized eggs so should I start separating them? He's not going to be around much longer but he's still nice to us - strange for a RIR from what I've read - and only crows infrequently.

We also have 2 new 3 week old RIR chicks but they're little young to put in with my pullet so we're keeping the roo around for company for the time being.

Thanks in advance - I'm still quite the newbie at this!

 

[gritsar]

Quote:
You can't tell the difference taste-wise in a fertilized egg vs. non-fertilized, if that is what you're thinking about. You could leave him with the hen until she lays her first egg, then discard the first eggs while you seperate them. It's not really a good idea to have only one hen for the rooster. He'll give her no peace at all.

 

[harldane]

Thanks for your quick response. I must have intuition, as I went out this afternoon and he went after her just as you all discussed - poor girl was scared out of her mind.

So, I guess I'll have to separate them for now and he'll be meeting Mr. ax this week - we can't have roos in our city.

Thanks again!

 

[Solsken Farm]

I was reading about how important it is to be top dog with your roo and that allowing him to mount a hen in your presence is akin to allowing him the upper hand.

Here's the article

http://shilala.homestead.com/roosters.html

Good luck!

 

[harldane]

WOW! That was a great article! I had no idea that you had be alpha with roos just like dogs - that comes second nature for me with them. But after reading that article, I have a different idea now about our first roo. I figured it was just pecking order between the 3 of them and he was "top dog" protecting his flock.

But it really surprised me when one day, it was like Hyde appeared where Jekyll had been previously. He went after your hands (or toes) if you tried to pick him up and could bite amazingly well. He'd stand his ground when you came near him and would chase you if you turned your back on him.

Since we knew we couldn't give him to anyone with this aggression problem, he met Mr. Ax. It was the first time hubby or I had to do something like that, but it did give us a little reassurance that we could be self-sustaining if the need was there.

And my 2 daughters were told from the day the chicks came home - if they're girls, they'll give us eggs. If they're boys....they're dinner. He didn't have as much meat on him as a Costco roasted chicken - but he lasted 1 meal.

I guess I need to change my sig now too....Yum Yum was dinner and Daisy's on "his" way to the stump.