One of the best resources I've found on dealing with roosters

[triciayoung]

And I am sorry everyone, but I don’t believe in genetic aggression. Isn’t that how pit bulls got targeted?

 

[TexasBlues]

Certain breeds like Pitbulls will be genetically predisposed to certain behaviors, but every being has a unique personality.
The saying “it’s not the dog, it’s the owner” is misleading to a lot of people. To say there isn’t a genetic behavior difference between a pug and a Belgian malinois would be naive.
I remember seeing a number of game chickens as a youth being handled and groomed. I don’t remember any mean roosters, but I do remember being flogged by hens.

 

[SarahGfa]

Here is another article you may enjoy: https://www.thefeatherbrain.com/blog/taming-aggressive-roosters

If I had seen that article back when I had an aggressive rooster. I would have culled him much sooner. Honestly, after all that training, she still can never take her eyes off him, and he sometimes bites her, and if a little kid shows up then what?

I agree that owners can to learn how to "manage" an aggressive rooster, but that's not the same thing as turning a mean rooster into a "nice" rooster.

I have experience training two mean roosters to be nice and this training has lasted over a year thus far. That are many people here as well that have done the same.

Please, tell us about it.

 

[triciayoung]

If I had seen that article back when I had an aggressive rooster. I would have culled him much sooner. Honestly, after all that training, she still can never take her eyes off him, and he sometimes bites her, and if a little kid shows up then what?

I agree that owners can to learn how to "manage" an aggressive rooster, but that's not the same thing as turning a mean rooster into a "nice" rooster.


Please, tell us about it.

I changed my attitude. Everything in the OA's article is correct.

 

[triciayoung]

thanks, I didn't know it, and find most of it consistent with my experience (currently 2 mature roos, 1 retired old roo, and 3 young roos, all living together in one mixed flock of 25).

Let me link to one that you might not know, but which is conducive to your approach, and written by someone with deep experience of normal (as opposed to rescued) roos: https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/understanding-your-rooster.75056/

@Shadrach does an excellent job teaching about roosters. A quote from the article: "
Some will say that aggressive behavior is genetically inherited. Every rooster inherits this; it’s an essential part of being a rooster.
I have yet to find any evidence that a particular breed of rooster is any more human aggressive than another.
Like most other creatures there is no incentive for a rooster to be aggressive towards a human unless the rooster considers himself or his hens under threat.
I’ve had 5 different breeds of rooster here over eight years and there has not yet come a point where I felt I had to cull a rooster because of his behavior towards me. I’ve been flogged, spurred, and pecked as I’ve learned. The most important thing I’ve learned is to let the rooster be what he is."

 

[Birdinhand]

I find it just a little amusing that a thread about roosters often becomes a demonstration of alphas sparring, neck feathers raised, wings out… I don’t see it as a dualistic, either or scenario. Between the opposites lies the path, truth of this sort is a paradox, IMHO, it’s not nature vs nurture but a blend of both to varying degrees with a wild range of outcomes depending on the unique mix of breed, nature and nurture of an individual. Learn about punnet squares if you want to be overwhelmed by how the variation of traits between predecessors can play out in an individual offspring!

In this thread I hear demonstrations of value on both sides of the argument. The article boils down to some valuable suggestions which could be applied to a high value member of a flock if resources allow for relatively extravagant individual attention.

People whose livelihoods require seeing their birds as livestock vs revered pet will balk at the notion that they should keep every rooster and open a rescue facility. How practical such personalized attention is depends a lot on whether we are talking boutique back yard flock or larger barnyard or even commercial scale operation.

I do think there is a naivety that shows in the referenced article, an implicit assumption that we should save every rooster. It’s true that it’s overwhelming to think that for every hen that hatches there is a rooster, most of which get ground up and disposed of. The article suggests it takes months to determine sex but then references how the males are macerated at only a few days old… it is critical to the industry that sex be determined early on as egg layer breed roosters are not marketable for meat, period. There is simply no way to rescue that many roosters. That doesn’t mean that rescues aren’t valuable and wonderful things, it’s just impossible to take the premise of the article to its implied end point.

The number of roosters off-ed for the purposes of back yard flocks is a drop in a giant ocean compared to that of commercial egg production. The thought of requiring municipalities to allow all roosters to be kept in back yards is, IMHO, insane and would only account for a tiny number of roosters overall, compared to commercial egg production. Roosters in the northwest summers where I live stop crowing at maybe 9PM and start again at sometimes 4 AM… the entire neighborhood freaks out. I’d love to be able to keep a rooster, even researched decrowing so I could breed, but time and practicality has had me accept a zero tolerance attitude in the city for roosters, where people live too close together. I’d even be all for having some neighborhoods zoned for small farms with rules designed to tolerate the lifes and rigors of small farming. Fortunately, Cornish cross meat bird roosters are edible and don’t start crowing till after harvest date, making them suitable for backyard urban homesteads.

As a humanistic person who is sympathetic to the ideologies found in books like “animals make us human” and who is fascinated by biology, the likes of which is explained in “the behavioral biology of chickens”, I am equally leery of hard core animal rights activists hiding extremism behind humanistic ideology. We can always strive to do better, and we should, but I don’t think it’s fair or practical to judge everyone’s attempt at raising back yard pets ( that are part livestock)or full on commercial livestock operations, with a kind of extreme idealism that simply is not practical at scale. Sometimes I wonder if such articles are written with a hidden agenda. This whole subject is worthy of tempered discussion, understanding that everyone has varied experiences and varied goals and resources. The best solution to date, that I have heard of, is the development of sensing devices which can sense the trace male hormones in eggs containing rooster ovum, allowing the eggs to be diverted to the food stream before incubation even begins, voila, reduced suffering and waste!! Why don’t such activists types promote this kind of technology rather than insist on forcing their extremism on others? This is the question I have. I think there are actual solutions to these issues if we can get past the extremist ideology, that is often well intended but often presented in such a “cockey” manner that it only raises everyone’s hackles, rather than raising awareness.

 

[Red Mangrove]

@Shadrach does an excellent job teaching about roosters. A quote from the article:
"I have yet to find any evidence that a particular breed of rooster is any more human aggressive than another."
...
"I’ve had 5 different breeds of rooster here over eight years and there has not yet come a point where I felt I had to cull a rooster because of his behavior towards me. I’ve been flogged, spurred, and pecked as I’ve learned. The most important thing I’ve learned is to let the rooster be what he is."

The sample size is too small for accuracy. I have direct experience in my own life that fully contradicts this conclusion starting with my very first flock

My first flock of chickens included three different breeds of rooster always grown, raised and living together under completely identical circumstances. 3 American Game, 1 Rhode Island Red, and 1 Red Junglefowl. They were placed into a brooder together during the first few days of life, then to the coop, and then completely free-range around two months of age. They had near unlimited room to roam, and plenty of females

Exactly as one would predict per genetics the American Game were completely peaceful and would sit on our shoulders harmlessly, the Rhode Island Red was aggressive and would peck anything that got too close to him, and the Red Junglefowl began attacking people

The only variable in my "experiment" was breed

This doesn't mean that every Red Junglefowl will be human aggressive, but it does mean there's an identifiable pattern that's genetic in origin. Just like any other behavioral characteristic in chickens, such as broodiness

 

[Shadrach]

It seems many of these discussions revolve around the view that good roosters shouldn't show aggression towards humans.
I can understand some people not wanting to keep a human aggressive rooster and I can understand many others do not have the time, space, knowledge or interest in working with such roosters in order to have a working relationship with him.
This is something that has changed over the many years I've been caring for chickens. When I was a young lad on a farm the livestock were expected to be aggressive, they weren't supposed to be tame pets. It was the humans duty to ensure their own safety when dealing with livestock, not expect the livestock to be tame and compliant.
Our ram would knock people over given the chance. It's what rams do. It hurts. He gets his head right underneath the buttocks and at the top of the thigh and tosses his head and you go down. He was quick and agile.
The breeding sows could easily kill a person who was follish enough to get caught in the pen. Just watching a breeding sow run full tilt into a steel clad gate which you had just hopped over dispelled any notion that pigs are meant to be cuddly bacon on a string.
So for me it's this view that the creatures we keep should be passive and compliant, tame if you will, rather than exhibit their natural behaviour that I don't understand.

 

[Birdinhand]

It seems many of these discussions revolve around the view that good roosters shouldn't show aggression towards humans.
I can understand some people not wanting to keep a human aggressive rooster and I can understand many others do not have the time, space, knowledge or interest in working with such roosters in order to have a working relationship with him.
This is something that has changed over the many years I've been caring for chickens. When I was a young lad on a farm the livestock were expected to be aggressive, they weren't supposed to be tame pets. It was the humans duty to ensure their own safety when dealing with livestock, not expect the livestock to be tame and compliant.
Our ram would knock people over given the chance. It's what rams do. It hurts. He gets his head right underneath the buttocks and at the top of the thigh and tosses his head and you go down. He was quick and agile.
The breeding sows could easily kill a person who was follish enough to get caught in the pen. Just watching a breeding sow run full tilt into a steel clad gate which you had just hopped over dispelled any notion that pigs are meant to be cuddly bacon on a string.
So for me it's this view that the creatures we keep should be passive and compliant, tame if you will, rather than exhibit their natural behaviour that I don't understand.

This ^^ is a very valuable perspective. It would track that this attitude has shifted as families have left the farm for the city, family farm has been morphed into factory farming on one hand while so many urbanites now clamor for greater connection to their food and rural life but live so close together in or near a big city, that laws and norms have been forced to change, becoming a more“domesticated” variant of the lifestyle. I grew up in a 125 acre farm and now live on a 10,000 square foot lot… I speak of this trend from experience even though I don’t like it.

 

[triciayoung]

I find it just a little amusing that a thread about roosters often becomes a demonstration of alphas sparring, neck feathers raised, wings out… I don’t see it as a dualistic, either or scenario. Between the opposites lies the path, truth of this sort is a paradox, IMHO, it’s not nature vs nurture but a blend of both to varying degrees with a wild range of outcomes depending on the unique mix of breed, nature and nurture of an individual. Learn about punnet squares if you want to be overwhelmed by how the variation of traits between predecessors can play out in an individual offspring!

In this thread I hear demonstrations of value on both sides of the argument. The article boils down to some valuable suggestions which could be applied to a high value member of a flock if resources allow for relatively extravagant individual attention.

People whose livelihoods require seeing their birds as livestock vs revered pet will balk at the notion that they should keep every rooster and open a rescue facility. How practical such personalized attention is depends a lot on whether we are talking boutique back yard flock or larger barnyard or even commercial scale operation.

I do think there is a naivety that shows in the referenced article, an implicit assumption that we should save every rooster. It’s true that it’s overwhelming to think that for every hen that hatches there is a rooster, most of which get ground up and disposed of. The article suggests it takes months to determine sex but then references how the males are macerated at only a few days old… it is critical to the industry that sex be determined early on as egg layer breed roosters are not marketable for meat, period. There is simply no way to rescue that many roosters. That doesn’t mean that rescues aren’t valuable and wonderful things, it’s just impossible to take the premise of the article to its implied end point.

The number of roosters off-ed for the purposes of back yard flocks is a drop in a giant ocean compared to that of commercial egg production. The thought of requiring municipalities to allow all roosters to be kept in back yards is, IMHO, insane and would only account for a tiny number of roosters overall, compared to commercial egg production. Roosters in the northwest summers where I live stop crowing at maybe 9PM and start again at sometimes 4 AM… the entire neighborhood freaks out. I’d love to be able to keep a rooster, even researched decrowing so I could breed, but time and practicality has had me accept a zero tolerance attitude in the city for roosters, where people live too close together. I’d even be all for having some neighborhoods zoned for small farms with rules designed to tolerate the lifes and rigors of small farming. Fortunately, Cornish cross meat bird roosters are edible and don’t start crowing till after harvest date, making them suitable for backyard urban homesteads.

As a humanistic person who is sympathetic to the ideologies found in books like “animals make us human” and who is fascinated by biology, the likes of which is explained in “the behavioral biology of chickens”, I am equally leery of hard core animal rights activists hiding extremism behind humanistic ideology. We can always strive to do better, and we should, but I don’t think it’s fair or practical to judge everyone’s attempt at raising back yard pets ( that are part livestock)or full on commercial livestock operations, with a kind of extreme idealism that simply is not practical at scale. Sometimes I wonder if such articles are written with a hidden agenda. This whole subject is worthy of tempered discussion, understanding that everyone has varied experiences and varied goals and resources. The best solution to date, that I have heard of, is the development of sensing devices which can sense the trace male hormones in eggs containing rooster ovum, allowing the eggs to be diverted to the food stream before incubation even begins, voila, reduced suffering and waste!! Why don’t such activists types promote this kind of technology rather than insist on forcing their extremism on others? This is the question I have. I think there are actual solutions to these issues if we can get past the extremist ideology, that is often well intended but often presented in such a “cockey” manner that it only raises everyone’s hackles, rather than raising awareness.

Let's be real....every one of us has a personal motivation in everything we do. I do not see the article as an animal activist article, rather a rescue's experience with roosters that they are sharing with others that love roosters. Also, extremism as you state, is really an opinion. You see extremism on this articles side, I and many others see extremism and cruelty for roosters that are ground to death alive.