Odd Symptoms in Rooster

[Eggcessive]

Sounds like he will be crowing again soon. If you want some crowers, I can lend you a couple, LOL. I don't know if some 1% hydrocortisone cream on his itchy spots would help, but it might if you have any. Nipple waterers are used by many on BYC, but they can be hard to use in winter because even with a heater in the container, they can freeze. I would always keep another water source just in case. If you start a new thread on nipple waterers, or just look up some older ones at the search at the top of the page, you could get a lot of info about places to order from. If you haven't tried some soft scrambled eggs or some raw beef liver on him yet, he will probably scarf those up.

 

[froggieogreen]

The coop already has an assortment of water containers in rotation - they've been freezing so quickly lately! On the plus side, the chickens seem partial to eating snow for liquid - maybe because open water can freeze and hurt them, or maybe they just like the texture of the snow. I've been looking up designs to try to find something that would be easier to winterize with the nipples... I'm thinking maybe I might have to build a stand and make a couple watering buckets to rotate out as they freeze. My husband thinks I'm nuts with all this, but the amount of time I spend every day changing out frozen water for all the animals is a little ridiculous.

I gave him a scrambled egg this morning and bam! Gone. He really loved it, and didn't have to share with anyone.

 

[Eggcessive]

Some of the people on the thread "Natural Chicken Keeping " use cups instead of nipples because they has less tendency to freeze, and they are always willing to share secrets if you post a question about them. Here is one thread about them: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/832371/waterers-cups-or-nipples

 

[froggieogreen]

Ok, I had some computer-access issues, so couldn't keep up with the posting. In a nutshell:

He is now crowing, though only 3-4 times in the morning.

He remains a wimp in regards to the other roosters, but is getting better (more on this later)

The god-awful-looking parts of his combs are looking better (but still bad) - I don't think he'll lose as much comb as I first thought.

His wattles are down to the right size length-wise, but are still swollen width-wise. Since they're much closer to their normal size, he now has no problems eating at ground level (he needed his dish raised so that his wattles wouldn't hit against the ground up until yesterday).

He's making ******-off chicken noises when I do something he doesn't like unlike before when I could do whatever the heck I wanted and he wouldn't protest.

I think he may have been injured in the neck during his fight - I couldn't see anything with his wattles so swollen before, but now that they've shrunk back down, it's clear that his neck was wonky and is almost better. Lucky that sorted itself out...

We moved him outside today (would have done this sooner but the weather was bad) and after his initial suspicions, decided that "outside" is so much better than "inside" that it was a bit tough to get him back in his box so that he wouldn't have direct contact (read: fight) with the other roosters. They are in the coop, he is in his box with a mesh "wall" in the lean-to.


In regards to him being a wimp: he bowed his head to the lowest of the roosters the second he got outside. *sigh* But, by this afternoon, he was all puffed out, standing tall(ish) and looked kind of like he was looking for a fight - he broke out of his box-pen to go find the flock and it was just good luck that I happened to be going around checking water at that point. In any case, I'm hopeful he can be reintegrated into the flock without needing to cull some of the other roosters earlier than we'd planned on (one especially has become incredibly aggressive - the one who attacked him - but aside from him they were all slated to join the big stewpot in the sky before the end of winter, so...). But, if it comes down to his safety, we will do that - keeping him indoors during the coldsnap was very taxing and very bad for my husband's asthmatic lungs.

The short version of this is that the serious life-threatning injuries recovered to "ok" very quickly, but he's clearly still healing from the frostbite and it very, very, very clearly took A LOT out of him.

 

[BigECarter]

Glad to hear he's doing better. Thanks for the update!

- E

 

[Eggcessive]

I'm glad to hear that he is doing much better. As for rooster fighting, after the age of 6 months, I find that I have to remove all but my main rooster. This year I raised about 10 heritage cockerels of 3 breeds that I want to breed and keep their line going since they were from good lines. After getting the numbers down to the last 3, I had to remove them except for one because they had all turned on my head rooster who had helped raise them and fathered one. The head rooster had been banished by the young ones. So we finally had to place the 3 breeders in a bachelor pen, and cull the rest. So I would suggest to chose whoever you want to stay, and go ahead and separate the others.

 

[froggieogreen]

That's funny timing Eggcessive - we've decided to do just that this weekend. They're all about 7 months old, and were doing really well until frostbite hit the flock and messed up their pecking order. Each remaining rooster now sees that he could be alpha under the right circumstances, and I can see that the only reason we hadn't had altercations before was because our main roo kept the aggressive one in check. I have now been fully validated in calling him "Jerkface." We were hoping to get them a bit bigger before processing as one of the last batch was small enough still that butchering was difficult, but they had to go early for behavioural reasons. It's pretty obvious which ones were sired by our neighbour's gentleman of a rooster and which ones came "preloaded" with the new chickens she brought in last spring.

 

[Eggcessive]

The reason my young cockerels started to overthrow the king, was that he was in the middle of a bad molt, and they started one by one to challenge him. After we removed the young guys, he finished his molt, and is back in charge. I'm not sure there would have been such a power struggle if it weren't for the molt, but he is pure ameraucana and a very responsible alert rooster, and I wanted to keep him in charge. My other guys, a heritage RIR, German New Hampshire, and black copper Marans, are in a pen waiting to start breeding next month when their girls are ready.

 

[froggieogreen]

Our main roo's a Black Copper Maran (as far as we can tell... his dad is, and his suspected mum is, but it's a mixed flock so who knows for sure? He looks like a poster child for the breed, though). He's our main choice partially because he's such a great guardian bird, and partially because he's so good-natured - he's also pretty big, but doesn't mind us handling him at all. I've recently learned that he's also not crazy about crowing at all hours of the day, unlike Jerkface who would be wonderful if he wasn't so aggressive and territorial. In any case, Jerkface is so sturdy that we were considering keeping him on and breeding for his comb and other hardy features, but holy moley, that's not going to happen now. He was so docile for a while that I thought I had misnamed him. The power's gone to his head! Ah well. I'm really excited to hatch out some eggs in the spring! They grow so quickly, it's really interesting to see how different characteristics manifest themselves.