My rooster and I’s Relationship

[Annalyse]

I have an aggressive rooster but here’s the thing he loves to cuddle. I know I was confused at first too. He is 2 years, at first when he was younger he starting showing signs of aggression but than the next minute he’s falling asleep in my lap. He loves taking walks with me and being held in my arms. He sits on my lap. After this when I put him back he pecks me hard or bites me because he didn’t like the way I put him back. He’ll flog and spur me but after he does that I pick him up, we walk and cuddle and than I sit in the coop now and wait for him to get of by himself and that’s actually worked. He doesn’t bite. He goes from being mean one minute and the next he’s my baby. He is 100% aggressive to others except when it comes to me occasionally. Does anyone else have this? He is more defensive when I’m near his girls, which I understand. It’s the moment to walk him away from them and he’s fine. He does still flog me here and there but other than that he’s my sweet little boy. I call it our “toxic” relationship. I am curious though if anyone has experienced this.

 

[Isadora]

Uh, no. Nor what I put up with that even if he is sweet sometimes. But I'm hardcore when it comes to mean roosters.

 

[Bigtom Turkey]

You are most likely misinterpreting his willingness to cuddle with a lack of fear of you.

 

[Bigtom Turkey]

If they aren't nice I just push them away gently and tell them "[name] no!" until they either go do something else for a bit or change tactics. The verbal component works better with a particular hen who has some vision issues, since she responds to voice commands a lot more than my others. I think the gentle pushing away is the main thing otherwise. If any of my hens do something mean while sitting on me (including to another chicken) then I say the same "[name] no!" and set them down straight away. When they ask nicely by making a noise, pose, or light tap, I try to respond quickly to maintain the association or at least reach down and give them a little feather scruffle so they at least get something positive even if I can't pick them up right then. The hardest one to train was my compulsive face-biter who would hop up and just nail me out of nowhere. With her I had to get a hand over her head and push her down pretty fast, kind of more like the way people push roosters down. She was naughty so often last year that she started to just give up and go sulk instead of ask for attention at all, so I had to ambush her with random momentary hugs when she was being good for about a week. I have coffee every day with my girls rain or shine so they've had a lot of reinforcement of those things.

I think most chickens are about as smart as a rubber mallet. With the exception of gamefowl. My guess is that you are just startling them.

 

[DonyaQuick]

May I ask how you trained your girls to peck you lightly for attention?

If they aren't nice I just push them away gently and tell them "[name] no!" until they either go do something else for a bit or change tactics. The verbal component works better with a particular hen who has some vision issues, since she responds to voice commands a lot more than my others. I think the gentle pushing away is the main thing otherwise. If any of my hens do something mean while sitting on me (including to another chicken) then I say the same "[name] no!" and set them down straight away. When they ask nicely by making a noise, pose, or light tap, I try to respond quickly to maintain the association or at least reach down and give them a little feather scruffle so they at least get something positive even if I can't pick them up right then. The hardest one to train was my compulsive face-biter who would hop up and just nail me out of nowhere. With her I had to get a hand over her head and push her down pretty fast, kind of more like the way people push roosters down. She was naughty so often last year that she started to just give up and go sulk instead of ask for attention at all, so I had to ambush her with random momentary hugs when she was being good for about a week. I have coffee every day with my girls rain or shine so they've had a lot of reinforcement of those things.

 

[Isadora]

He’s my first one and I was afraid he would be killed with a new owner. I love him very much. I have boundaries with him and he hasn’t crossed any and hopefully will never

What boundaries? Sounds like he attacks you constantly.

 

[DonyaQuick]

My cuddly hens and my new cuddly roo will often ask for hugs. Asking for attention can come in many forms and you can train it to a degree. I've had to train a couple of my hens that asking to be picked up must be gentle - i.e. a light tap rather than biting hard enough to leave a mark. If I hadn't trained them on that, my lower legs would be one big bruise lol. My rooster came to me already trained to ask for hugs by assuming a "pick me up" pose and/or resting his head on me. So, I do wonder if you're actually teaching your roo that aggression gets him attention by picking him up too soon after his aggressive outbursts and/or by not correcting his tantrums when you set him down.

 

[DonyaQuick]

I think most chickens are about as smart as a rubber mallet. With the exception of gamefowl. My guess is that you are just startling them.

Extremely willful yes, requiring a TON of reinforcement yes, sometimes having to explore behavior options by brute force yes...but dumb as a rock no. There are plenty of videos online showing people training chickens to do things with simple reinforcement tricks. If any animal does something occasionally, you can usually teach it not to do that thing or to do it more. Mine are not startled; if anything they get angry when I push them back (which is SLOW and gentle so they don't spook). I've also had to teach my vision-impaired hen how to jump on all the jumpable things in the enclosure since she has no depth perception and will just slam into stuff otherwise. I use voice commands as part of that so I don't have to guide her by hand all the time.

In the beginning I’ve tried correcting him. I’ve had to watch videos on how to rain him and they just never worked for me. He just gets more aggresive with it. He likes to jump up on things to get high. Like I’ll point at something and say come on and he’ll jump up onto it. I honestly gave up with the correcting and training because I don’t think it ever worked. How can I do it now?

With pretty much any animal, the initial attempt to change a deeply-reinforced existing behavior can prompt pushback/escalation. The animal may think it just has to try harder to get what it wants. It takes persistence and consistency to get past that. It can be a process of weeks, not days. Go in expecting it to get worse at first (and dress accordingly!) and be a rock - don't react to him having a go at you except to issue the correction. With any aggressive animal, if it has a go at you and you flinch, pull your hand back, etc., you just taught it that it can bully you. Ideally you also want consistency from the entire household, so if others can't be equally stoic then it's better that they don't interact until significant training has taken place.

I don't have a lot of rooster experience but it honestly sounds to me like you have a very friendly and trainable chicken if you can tell him to jump here or there and he does it. You might not be able to stop all of his aggression, but I would hope it can be at least toned down.

There are basically only two things you can do with any animal: reward the good behavior and present some stimulus he doesn't like or remove something he does like for the bad - and then hope he's still malleable enough to change (some animals get harder to train out of things with age). If it were me I would be inclined to try rewarding him for following commands. If he likes hugs, ask him to jump then pick him up and give him attention. You could also use food treats if he'll eat them and doesn't just try to tidbit with it. Reward for random goodness will encourage the good behavior in a broad sense. For aggressive outbursts, pin his front end down on the ground until he sits still for several seconds. If he flies back at you when you let him up, pin again, and repeat. Assuming he finally moves away, just let him be and try interacting with him again later in the day. If he just won't give it a rest no matter how many times you pin him, you could try using a penalty box - a small enclosure or pet carrier to put him in for 5-10min that doesn't get him what he wants but also doesn't let him carry on being aggressive.

To place this advice in context: I have not had to wrangle a mean rooster specifically, but I have had to wrangle a good many other animals with bad behaviors over time, including other birds like parrots.

 

[HumbleAmerican]

My steadfast rule is rooster flogs a human, he is cooling and resting by nightfall.

 

[Annalyse]

Uh, no. Nor what I put up with that even if he is sweet sometimes. But I'm hardcore when it comes to mean roosters.

He’s my first one and I was afraid he would be killed with a new owner. I love him very much. I have boundaries with him and he hasn’t crossed any and hopefully will never