My Turkeys Are Attacking New Rooster

[paigemn]

We have 2 turkeys, 8 chickens, and we just brought home a new rooster. The turkeys keep attacking him. They were raised as babies with the others and they all get along great. They’re fine until he gets close and then they try to attack him. What can I do? I’m worried they might seriously hurt him.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

Separate out the turkeys. They can be deadly to chickens. I always recommend keeping the species separately but no one listens to me.

 

[paigemn]

Is there anyway at all to correct this behavior? If this doesn’t get resolved we’re going to have to return the rooster. We saved him from being butchered. We can’t keep them both if the turkeys can’t be nice. We can’t afford to build another coop for the turkeys right now. Our turkeys are so friendly to humans and to my dogs. I was shocked to see them be so mean.

 

[R2elk]

Is there anyway at all to correct this behavior? If this doesn’t get resolved we’re going to have to return the rooster. We saved him from being butchered. We can’t keep them both if the turkeys can’t be nice. We can’t afford to build another coop for the turkeys right now. Our turkeys are so friendly to humans and to my dogs. I was shocked to see them be so mean.

All poultry have pecking orders. You introduced a new member to the flock. The turkeys are at the top of the pecking order and took exception.

Did you put the rooster where the rest of the flock could get acquainted with it with a barrier between them or did you just turn the rooster loose with the rest of the flock? Your turkeys may never accept a rooster into the flock. Or using a controlled introduction they may accept it with only a few pecking order squabbles. It also can help if there are hiding places for the rooster to get away from the harassment.

As @oldhenlikesdogs has pointed out many times, turkeys can be very single minded and can carry on relentlessly once they get something in their minds. Turkeys are quite capable of killing chickens or any small creatures. Keeping turkeys and chickens together is not for everyone and definitely requires much more space than chickens alone require.

 

[paigemn]

I just set the rooster loose with the whole flock. This morning I’ve been trying to see how I can stop it and one thing I did notice is that the turkeys don’t attack unless they’re together. I put each turkey alone with the rooster and the chickens for a while and it didn’t attack him at all. They only do it when together.

 

[paigemn]

In case anyone reads this looking for help on this topic I thought I’d do an update. It’s been a week since we got the rooster and everybody is getting along just fine now. It took a few days to see an improvement. We separated them at night all of last week and just built a small temporary house for the turkeys to sleep in. They free range outside so the rooster had plenty of spots to run to when they got mean. But now everybody gets along perfectly The turkeys aggression towards him has completely stopped