Older hen and maturing Cockerel will not stop bickering!

[Blueeyez]

I have a flock of about 40 chickens, big variety of different breeds from the tiniest bantams to and the biggest standards but all breeds generally considered friendly. Everyone usually gets along great and I very rarely see squabbles between any of them. Until this last week anyways.... One of my tiny little old English game bantam hens who is about 2 years old has been initiating fights with a young Yokohama cockrell that I have. He has just began to cockadoodledoo this week and since the Cock-A-Doodle has begun the bickering had become non-stop with these two..... Neither of them have hurt each other (knocking on wood) yet anyways.... But I have definitely noticed the little bantam hen is the one initiating it every time. And she is just relentless! I just don't understand what she has against him all the sudden and why she keeps singeling him out and initiating fights. It's also very bizarre to me that my alpha rooster just completely ignores that it's even happening. In fact, the entire flock acts as if nothing out of the ordinary is going on even if there going ay it right in the middle of scratch time or whatever. Which is strange to me because even though bickering amongst my flock is pretty uncommon, but when I have seen bickering between any of them before, my alpha rooster usually runs right over and breaks it up. Any ideas on why she would be doing this? Or what the heck is going on between these two? And what I can do to keep the peace? Lol

 

[azygous]

If your cockerel were to disregard the bantam hen's choice to discourage his desire to mate and were the hen to set up a kerfuffle, your alpha roo would likely intervene to set the cockerel straight. As long as the cockerel is the one being scolded by the hen, the alpha roo is content to leave the tension between the two for them to work out.

At least this is the way my alpha roo and the junior roo conduct themselves. The rookie roo was always getting his ass kicked for misbehavior with the hens during his first year after he got his hormones. Now the flock has been pretty much divided into two harems with the two roos cavorting with their own hens.