Need help with Roosters!

[Domestic_goddess]

I have 6, 12 week old roos, 2 or 3 of which I want to keep for breeding. I already have a RIR Rooster. I will probably have all the roos in seperate pens and only use them for breeding. My question is, Will the Roosters go mean or aggressive, if they are always kept in pens? My RIR is in with 24 hens and he's ripping thier back feathers to shreds, I want to try and prevent this in the future and only have them breeding when I want them to. I have 40 hens total. What do you think?

 

[Ridgerunner]

Will the roosters go mean or aggressive? Maybe, but not because they are in pens. It is an individual personality thing.

I don't know what your set-up is. If you keep all the roosters in one pen by themselves, they will probably get along OK together. They will have pecking order issues, but so will hens kept together. It is possible there will be dominance fights, but not a guarantee of this. Many people do what I think you are talking about. You might do a search on bachelor pen to find some of those threads.

I don't do this, so I have no direct experience with this. I'm basing this on what I have read on here and just general experience. And of course, this depends on your set-up and how you want to manage them. There is no one right answer for all of us.

I'd keep all roosters together in one pen. Do not allow any rooster with the hens so you don't have to worry about waiting until the sperm from the old rooster has gone away. That can take over three weeks. Then when you want hatching eggs, put the rooster you want in a pen of no more than 10 hens. Start checking the eggs for fertility and when most of them are showing fertile, start collecting eggs for hatching. I'd expect it to take five to seven days for most to show fertile, but each flock is different. When that breeding program is over, put him back in the bachelor pen. I'd expect some pecking order issues there, but maybe no dominance fights. I'd also expect some pecking order issues with you putting thise hens back in the general population, but there is a reasonable chance none of these will be that big an issue. Of course, these could be very severe in either group, roosters or hens. There is just no way of knowing for sure in advance.

This is just one way. If your goals or set-up is different than I am assuming, then you could do something totally different.

Good luck!

 

[Domestic_goddess]

Anyone else have any ideas? Now if I keep just one Rooster in it's own pen....will he be upset if I let the hens free range and he sees them?

The two roos I plan on keeping , I'll try and keep together as long as they get along.

 

[kathyinmo]

I have used several different methods, and all of them have been successful. I have had a pen of 9 roosters, and they all got along. Never did have a problem. They saw the hens through the fence. They all learn the pecking order and keep their assigned places. Chicken dynamics are so interesting!

With 40 hens, when you are not breeding, you could leave all 3 roosters out with them. They would learn to get along. That is, if that is what you wanted to do.

 

[Domestic_goddess]

Quote:
My biggest concern is my hens back feathers and I want to prevent feather damage. So i'm wondering about keeping them compeletly seperate and only allow them together for breeding. So what I'm getting and from research is that as long as I raise them from birth together you can keep roosters together as long as there isn't fighting. I worried that if I have 3 roosters all the same pen with my hens I'm going to have bare backs every where!

 

[Ridgerunner]

You can keep them together even if there is occasional fighting. There is cetainly some risk involved because occasionally it becomes a fight to the death, but with mine that fighting usually involves a lot more runnng away and being chased than actual blood loss. I fully admit, there is risk. I sure can't tell you what will happen with yours. Keeping them separated from the hens is a good way to manage that risk.

As far as the barebacked hens, number of roosters per hen is not a huge factor. As you have seen one rooster with 24 hens does not keep them safe. With that many hens, if you only had one or two barebacked, I'd say the problem might be more with the hens than the rooster, but if it is very many, you likely have a brute of a rooster. It sounds like he is not a juvenile. A lot of times, roosters get better in that regard as they get older. And there is no reason to think the other roosters will be that bad.

You can try trimming his spurs and toenails. That might help. You are not looking at cutting them off, just cutting the sharp tip off. There are many threads on this forum about that. But from what you have described, separating them might be your best choice.

 

[Domestic_goddess]

My RIR rooster is 2 years old. His spurs are very long, I will look into trimming those. He has his favorites, out of 24 hens in that coop, atleast 15 have either lots of broken feathers or competely barebacked. I have watched him and I don't really like how rough he is...Maybe he needs to go!

 

[Saltysteele]

i have seen many, many videos of people twisting off the spurs with pliers, and is what i will do when my sussex's gets long enough.

search for chickens spurs on youtube. the hardness will grow back around the digit (the spur), but you can repeat it again later. some say the spur gets smaller and smaller each time (i don't see how, but...)

 

[Veggie4life55]

Our Rooster's spurs normally get to about an inch and then he always finds a way to break them off himself...

We have two of our three roosters fighting right now and they all grew up together. Actually my rooster that was born last year is picking a fight with the two other roosters we already had and because he is younger & smaller he is alot faster then our big rooster and he has really been picking and chasing him alot. Even when he just stops and puts his head in the corner to hide our other rooster will not leave him alone. I was really hoping they would all get along and now I don't know what to do. I gave them a flock block to try to give them something new... and now we are expanding the enclosure from 12x16 to 12 x24 hoping that a little extra space will help. We only have 10 chickens... so it shouldn't be a space issue... I guess next I am going to try to separate and put all the roosters together without the hens to see if that helps... But for the first two years my other roosters always got along.... but I think it had to do with one being a banti and one is huge so their was never a question on pecking order with the two of them.


and as for the hens backs... some of our hens are missing all their feathers on their backs others not so much. But they grow back in the fall before winter. It is annoying how ruff the roosters are with the hens... I wish our roosters would just leave our hens alone...