New Rooster Killing Existing Hens?

[Scott83]

Hi,

First post so bear with me

So Yesterday I noticed they were having a poultry sale / swap meet at the local produce store. Found some beautiful Coronation Sussex girls that came with a Coronation Sussex Rooster and decided to add them to my existing brood. My current brood consisted of approx 15 Isa Browns with 3 White leghorns. Snuck them all in together after dark. My run / coop is approx 25 m2 (6m x 4m) with a tractor tacked onto one end of it.

Went and checked them this morning, no major problems to speak of, the dominant Isa was challenging the Rooster (he is quite big but she could handle him) and that seemed to go on for some time. Some minor pecking between the other browns and the new coro sussex girls. The sussex girls seem very docile and easy going a very nice bird.

Ok so when I arrived home from works 8 or 9 hrs later, this is when the problem became apparent. One of the white leghorns was dead on the top level of of the tractor (towards the back like she had been forced there. Upon further inspection it became evident that she had been bleeding quite a lot from her rear (seemed more internal though) I'm assuming she died of shock from the trauma of it all, poor girl. Another of the White leghorns was looking a bit dazed down on the bottom level and again, appeared to be bleeding from her rear end (mostly internal and several hours later she to died of shock.) At this stage it was dusk so the birds were roosting and I wasn't able to view any of the aggression. I'm assuming the rooster is the culprit.The existing brood had already established their hierarchy and never ever had they once shown aggression toward rear ends or picking to cause bleeding, and this happening twice in one day is just two coincidental with the intro of the newbies. Now the coro sussex hens are just too placid and them being the new submissive rather than the existing dominant ones, I just can't see them handing out this much punishment. Now if it was the new Rooster, would he pick at rear ends? Could it simply have been from super aggressive mating with him thinking the White Leghorn Hens were the coro sussex hens (both breeds being white.) The white leghorn hens would be less than half the Coro Sussex Roosters size. They still had all their feathers intact and it just appeared to be the mostly internal bleeding, can they actually do damage with their genitals if they are huge roosters in comparison?

To follow with caution I have isolated him to his own tractor inside the run. I'm having tomorrow off work to keep a keen eye on them all. I think the outcome will be taking him too a new home, don't really see any other possible outcome. I certainly don't want to put any other girls through that ordeal and maybe I should have known better? maybe just unlucky.

Sorry for all the questions, any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks, Scott.

 

[bobbi-j]

Your existing birds may have had their pecking order established, but when you added the new birds, all of that went out the window. Any time you add new chickens to a flock, their whole world is upended and they are basically back to square one. It could be that one started pecking her, drew blood and the rest joined in.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Roosters do not have genitals as you are thinking. They touch vents and exchange fluids. He inserts nothing into the hen. I don't know what's going on but it is certainly not a rooster's genitals ripping those hens apart.

A rooster doesn’t care about color. He will mate with any hen of any breed. They were not singled out by him because they were white.

I assume you are in the UK from your post. If that happened in the US I’d guess that a possum got in the coop and killed those hens. Possums normally eat from the rear like that. I don’t know what predators you might have, but most tend to start at the head other than a possum. That it was your smaller hens is a bit strange, but maybe the predator wasn’t really large. Still, that is only one possibility.

Chickens can be cannibalistic. Perfectly docile chickens can turn on a flockmate and literally eat them alive if they see blood. That doesn’t happen every time they see blood but it does sometimes happen. If a chicken starts bleeding it can get serious. Why that would happen to two of your three white leghorns in one day and not to any of the others I can’t imagine. That makes no sense.

When a rooster mates with a hen there are two possible areas he could damage. Part of the mating ritual is for the rooster to grab the back of the hen’s head. That not lonely puts him in proper position to hit the target and helps him maintain balance, the head grab is the hen’s signal to raise her tail out of the way. It’s really rare but possible he could damage the back of her head.

When the rooster is on top, he holds on with his feet. He has several really sharp claws. It’s possible he could damage her back with those claws. When that kind of damage occurs it is usually after a sequence of mating over many days. Her feathers protect her back but they can come off over time, sometimes from his poor technique and sometimes because the hen has a genetic defect that causes the feathers to be really brittle and just break off. That’s known as “barebacked hen” on this forum, when the hen loses enough feathers to show bare skin. That is a dangerous situation but it is not damage to her vent. It’s damage to her back.

When they mate, the hen squats on the ground. This carries the weight of the rooster to the ground through her entire body, not just through her legs. Although they are a lot smaller than the rooster, it’s highly unlikely the size difference had anything to do with it.

I don’t have a clue what happened. That it happened only to the two white leghorns makes even less sense. But since it happened when you brought the new chickens home, it makes sense to think it has something to do with them.

The only reason you need a rooster is to get fertile eggs to hatch. Anything else is pure personal preference. I think it would be prudent in your case to get rid of that rooster even though it doesn’t sound like something he’d do. Although they seem docile, watch the Sussex hens to see if that damage reoccurs. I don’t know what is going on but two deaths like that in one day is two to many. Something is not right.

 

[Scott83]

Well after isolating the rooster all was well today, happy hens. Going to give him away to a good home we know what of. Sad though as I do enjoy the chatter of a rooster constantly rounding up his girls. Might have another shot with a smaller room when we move to our 5 acres. Thanks for all the good info.

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[WalkingOnSunshine]

I, too, have had trouble with my white Leghorns this year. I've had two suddenly start bleeding from the vent and give me bloody eggs, then die. I never did figure out what was going on, and I'm sure it wasn't rooster damage. It was only white Leghorns that had this problem. Your Leghorns weren't from Meyer, by any chance?

 

[Scott83]

Hrmmm maybe it was unrelated to the rooster totally, there were several eggs with blood on them which doesn't usually happen. There really didn't appear to be any external damage. Geez they don't make it easy for us to figure these things out of they

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[Scott83]

On and as to whether they were from Meyer or not, I'm from Brisbane, Australia.

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[WalkingOnSunshine]

On and as to whether they were from Meyer or not, I'm from Brisbane, Australia.

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Guess not, then!