My rooster is being violent! Help!

[Chiaralouisa]

This morning I woke up to the sound of my rooster crowing everything was going well that day until I looked out the window. I was horrified to see that both my roosters where chasing the hens in the coop it looked like they where playing tag, but the hen where loosing. I watched for a couple more seconds before running oustside. I grabbed my hens travel cage and tried getting my roosters in it. No surprise my roosters didn't want to get in. So I put in some mealworms as bait and still nothing. That is until my brave hen Mint went inside the cage... immediately one of the roosters ran in after her he came up from behind and violently bit down on her neck. I separated them and held my rooster back. She made a run for it and I closed the cage door and took my rooster out of the coop and into a smaller coop I used when my chickens where chicks. And so here we are my rooster is separated from my hens. I really don't know what to do now when i think back at it I realise how violent my rooster really is. Luckily I can't remember my other rooter ever being violent all I can remember is him establishing becking order. What should I do? Do I get rid of my violent rooster or will that effect my hens? I'm pretty sure I've already found a good home for him.

 

[chickens really]

Get rid of him....All you need is one Rooster...If your not using him for breeding?...You don't need any Roosters...

 

[andreanar]

If you have a place for him to go, make use of it! Its so hard to find them new homes. Are they young? Young cockerels will sometimes gang up on the girls to force mate them. They can get pretty rough. The girls will not even care and they wont be so stressed out. I got rid of my cockerel a few weeks ago and the girls didn't even seem to notice.

 

[RoostersAreAwesome]

How many hens do you have? How many roosters? Would you be willing to build a separate pen for the rooster(s)?

 

[J&Kfeatheredfowl]

Get rid of him....All you need is one Rooster...If your not using him for breeding?...You don't need any Roosters...

Agreed, no need, especially with a rooster like that. However if he is the dominant rooster. You may want to watch your other one, as he may just be keeping calm until the other rooster leaves. If the calmer rooster is the more dominant, then your less dominant my be stressed because of it. Either way he doesn’t need to stay

 

[J&Kfeatheredfowl]

How many hens do you have? How many roosters? Would you be willing to build a separate pen for the rooster(s)?

THis too could work, especially if you don’t have enough hens

 

[keesmom]

This morning I woke up to the sound of my rooster crowing everything was going well that day until I looked out the window. I was horrified to see that both my roosters where chasing the hens in the coop it looked like they where playing tag, but the hen where loosing. I watched for a couple more seconds before running oustside. I grabbed my hens travel cage and tried getting my roosters in it. No surprise my roosters didn't want to get in. So I put in some mealworms as bait and still nothing. That is until my brave hen Mint went inside the cage... immediately one of the roosters ran in after her he came up from behind and violently bit down on her neck. I separated them and held my rooster back. She made a run for it and I closed the cage door and took my rooster out of the coop and into a smaller coop I used when my chickens where chicks. And so here we are my rooster is separated from my hens. I really don't know what to do now when i think back at it I realise how violent my rooster really is. Luckily I can't remember my other rooter ever being violent all I can remember is him establishing becking order. What should I do? Do I get rid of my violent rooster or will that effect my hens? I'm pretty sure I've already found a good home for him.

More information would help.

How old are these males? How many females do you have and what are their ages? What are the dimensions of your coop and run? I would separate both males for now to give the hens a break.

Why do you want to keep either of them? Unless you want to hatch your own eggs there is no reason to keep a rooster.

 

[aart]

Need to learn about how chicken society operates.
Quoting centrarchid:
"Make every effort to understand your chicken's biology and the environment that supports it."

Great write up that I saved, lost link to original.
Ridgerunner's Rooster Rundown
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ridgerunner

Typical mating behavior between mature consenting adults.

The rooster dances for a specific hen. He lowers one wing and sort of circles her. This signals his intent.

The hen squats. This gets her body onto the ground so the rooster’s weight goes into the ground through her entire body and not just her legs. That way she can support a much heavier rooster without hurting her legs.

The rooster hops on and grabs the back of her head. The head grab helps him get in the right position to hit the target and helps him to keep his balance, but its major purpose is to tell the hen to raise her tail out of the way to expose the target. A mating will not be successful if she does not raise her tail and expose the target. The head grab is necessary.

The rooster touches vents and hops off. This may be over in the blink of an eye or it may take a few seconds. But when this is over the rooster’s part is done.

The hen then stands up, fluffs up, and shakes. This fluffy shake gets the sperm into a special container inside the hen near where the egg starts its internal journey through her internal egg making factory.

With five month olds you are not dealing with consenting adults. You are dealing with adolescents that have no control over their hormones. The cockerels normally mature earlier than the pullets and are being driven mad by their hormones. The pullets have no idea what is going on so they certainly are not going to cooperate.

At that age most of this is not about sex either. The mating ritual is about dominance. The one on bottom is accepting the dominance of the one on top, either willingly or by force. It’s not about pecking order either, but total flock dominance. The cockerel’s hormones are screaming at it to dominate the pullets but the pullets are not ready for that. It takes both to do their part, pullets as well as cockerel.

To do his job as flock master, the cockerel has to be the dominant chicken. How can he keep peace in his flock if he can’t break up a fight without the others beating the crap out of him? What good does it do to warn of danger if no one listens? How can he fertilize the eggs if they don’t cooperate? A cockerel is usually bigger and stronger than the pullets. If they don’t cooperate willingly he is going to force them. That’s part of his job, to be the dominant chicken.

Part of being the dominant chicken is that he has to act like a mature adult. He needs to dance for the ladies, find them food, watch for danger, keep peace on his flock, and do all the things a mature rooster does to take care of his flock. He also has to have enough self-confidence to win the hens over by his personality. It takes a while for most cockerels to get their hormones under control enough to be able to do this.

Normally the pullets and cockerel will mature enough to play their part in the flock. For the pullets that is often about the time they start to lay, though some take a few months longer. I’ve had a cockerel do that at five months but that is really rare. I’ve had some that took a full calendar year to win over all the ladies. Normally around seven months a cockerel will mature enough to start getting his hormones under control and act like a flock master should. Normally the pullets are ready to accept him at this time but more mature hens may hold out a little longer. It’s going to vary with each flock, depending on the personality of the individual hens and rooster.

Until the cockerel and the pullets mature enough to fulfil their duties in the flock and learn proper technique, it can get pretty rough. Normally neither the cockerel nor the pullets are harmed during his maturing process but since force is involved injury is always possible. The big problem for a lot of people is that it is just hard to watch, especially if they don’t understand the dynamics of what is going on. I don’t see anything unusual or out of the ordinary in what you describe.

You may hear that disaster is assured unless you get more pullets. Some people believe that a magic ratio of hens to rooster will solve all these types of problems, ten to one is often quoted. It doesn’t work that way. Many breeders keep one rooster with one or two hens throughout the breeding season without any problems. One secret though is that they use roosters and hens, not cockerels and pullets. That makes a big difference. You can have the same problems with very small hen to rooster ratios as you do with very large hen to rooster ratios. If you want to use this as an excuse to get more pullets by all means go for it. But it is an excuse, not a real reason.

Some cockerels crow a lot. Some don’t crow much. It varies a lot by the individual. I don’t know of any way to control that during the day. Often if they are crowing at night they see a light. Maybe you have a security light or street light shining in a window. Maybe a car passing on the road will light up the coop. Maybe it is just a full moon. If you can keep the coop dark at night you can usually reduce the night-time crowing.

Good luck! It’s probably going to be a messy down there for a couple of months, but if you can get through this phase, you should have a nice flock

 

[Chickassan]

Not much violence going on just two young guys jockeying for position. You could eliminate the competition by just keeping one guy but the remaining one is still going to try and mate and even though it looks and sounds terrible it really isn't. Personally I don't like all the drama involved in chicken love but I've had to accept that's just how they roll. I do however enjoy having a traditional flock watching all the aspects involved pretty and not so pretty.

 

[nissalovescats]

I've noticed that 'normal' behavior for my chickens includes my roosters chasing down hens for mating purposes and all attempting to mate with her at once. But if any hens (or roosters) are being seriously bullied it's always good to have a small pen or two for recovery purposes. Usually in my experience roosters don't really want to hurt the hens, they just get enthusiastic about mating. Popular hens lose their back and neck feathers due to all the action.

I had a couple of purebred Buff Brahma roosters penned with a half Buff Brahma, half whatever rooster. The half-blood beat up the purebred roosters--- evidently his other half was a more violent breed than the calm Brahmas. In that case I didn't need the half-blood so he was sold to an Eastern European neighbor who wanted to make soup.