necessary to re home roosters?

[trainarc]

We have 6 barred rocks, 3 of which we believe are roosters. If they are not being aggressive towards each other do we have to re home them? I don't want any fighting and but they are still young (about 3 months) so they might start fighting.....

 

[Pyxis]

You don't need to rehome them if you have enough hens for them. If you only have six chickens and three are cockerels and three are pullets, that's not going to work out; the roosters will be very hard on the pullets and the pullets will end up overmated, losing feathers, very stressed, and possibly even injured. Also, with a small number of pullets, the cockerels are more likely to fight over them. I would recommend at least 5-7 hens per rooster, so if you want to keep all three, you will need to get more girls. For three roosters, you should have probably 21 hens.

 

[Folly's place]

Welcome! At least 20 to 30 hens! As the boys mature, you may find that one or more of them are human aggressive, or have other issues that make them bad flock mates. They may or may not get along as they mature, or come next spring, fighting gets worse. I've had as many as six mature roosters with no issues, but that's not typical. I would give them more time to develop, and then decide who to keep, if any. Mary

 

[bobbi-j]

The best thing you can do is start making a plan now, and watching your flock. It's very likely that your hens will be stressed and overmated, and likely that your roosters will fight. Not saying it's a 100% sure thing, since they are living animals and they don't all read the books and follow the "rules". What I can tell you is that when I had a flock of 50% cockerels and 50% pullets, once the cockerels reached sexual maturity, the poor girls didn't have a chance. They were constantly chased and mated to the point where they couldn't eat, drink, or dust bathe because one or more of the males was trying to mate them. They were free ranged, so they had plenty of room to try to get away, and still they were stressed. This didn't last long - a couple of days maybe - before I put the cockerels in the grow-out pen for butchering when they reached a reasonable size.