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

[Red Mangrove]

My worst rooster was a purebred Orpington, good bloodlines, hand raised from an egg, he was carefully gentled, handled from hatching, treated with great kindness, never abused, never improperly challenged by humans or other roosters and he was pure psychopath. I found him attempting to kill my best hen. Barely saved her life. She was docile, sweet and productive. In no way did she challenge the little bastage. He just felt like killing something.
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Raising them right? Naw. Proper handling? Naw. Genetics? Maybe. Luck? Heck yes!

I believe that human imprinting is a cause of human directed violence. The rooster is raised thinking himself human, or that humans are chickens. I know that in falconry falcons are respectful to humans when not imprinted- but if they're raised from hatch by human hand then they become extremely violent to humans when emotionally disturbed

In my experience the only aggressive roosters I've ever encountered were raised by humans. I don't touch or handle my roosters at all, they all live under identical respectful circumstances, but something about human imprinting causes them to assault innocent bystanding humans. Not one broody raised rooster here has put a single scratch on a human and I've had many feral, exotic, game and conventional breeds

Aggression is genetic in origin and human imprinting is the key that allows it to happen

 

[SarahGfa]

If you are a person who doesn't want to take the time or effort to work with a rooster, then don't, but please stop shaming and discouraging everybody else who does want to take the time and the effort. These techniques are proven and I know many other people who have also had success with them. So if people who love their roosters want to try to improve their relationships with them, why not just say, "Good luck!"

Last thing - if anyone at all is interested in working with roosters, check out the non-profit Roovolution. They have a great YouTube channel and podcast. They show how to work with problem roosters using only kind methods. They also will help people one-on-one who are having problems with their roosters. You can schedule a consultation with them on their website for free.

I am not ridiculing or shaming anyone, I am being realistic about how much you can "train" a rooster. I agree that YOU can learn to move slowly and avoid triggers that make the rooster freak out, and you can bribe him to sit on your lap. If you ever slip up, he attacks again. Not to mention unfamiliar kids that might run through the yard. The Roovolution videos show a "tame" rooster attacking a guy for moving his arm too suddenly. That's what you should expect.

Of course I do not discourage anyone from trying, as long as they know they can't "change" a rooster. Personally, I have wasted too many years of my life trying to "tame" aggressive males with kindness. Not just roosters, either.

 

[Double Yolked]

I believe that human imprinting is a cause of human directed violence. The rooster is raised thinking himself human, or that humans are chickens. I know that in falconry falcons are respectful to humans when not imprinted- but if they're raised from hatch by human hand then they become extremely violent to humans when emotionally disturbed

In my experience the only aggressive roosters I've ever encountered were raised by humans. I don't touch or handle my roosters at all, they all live under identical respectful circumstances, but something about human imprinting causes them to assault innocent bystanding humans. Not one broody raised rooster here has put a single scratch on a human and I've had many feral, exotic, game and conventional breeds

Aggression is genetic in origin and human imprinting is the key that allows it to happen

That, unfortunately doesn't remotely explain the extreme difference between my Orp and the rooster in my avatar photo. Both were raised exactly the same. FB, my Wyandotte in the photo was an intelligent, trustworthy bird who took excellent care of his hens. The Orp was as I said, a brutal psychopath. Both were raised from eggs brooded by my hens, both were given the same gentle handling. This may be a trifle hard to relate to, but some of us don't use incubators. The mother hens were tame and had no issues with my spending time with their brood. My other very bad roo was also brooded the same way. He attacked me and anyone else entering the run any chance he could get. I actually didn't spend as much time with him since I (embarrassedly) thought he was a hen until he started to crow. I simply didn't have time to interact with every bird in the coop, at that time I had close to 60 birds.

 

[Rachel TW]

As a long time chicken keeper who does love roosters but also recognizes there really are bad ones I can only say what I have observed for myself. (and yeah I've had a LOT of roosters)
I've had several good roosters, one great rooster and a couple that were .... not worth stewing.
My avatar was a really good rooster I hand raised.
Nature dealt chickens a bad hand for domestication. Chicken genetics are skewed against roosters They are programed to be aggressive, loud and wild and we never really tried to fix that until this last 100 years. Heck we exploited it. Also unfortunately, they are set up percentage wise to be the standard mammalian 50/50.
My worst rooster was a purebred Orpington, good bloodlines, hand raised from an egg, he was carefully gentled, handled from hatching, treated with great kindness, never abused, never improperly challenged by humans or other roosters and he was pure psychopath. I found him attempting to kill my best hen. Barely saved her life. She was docile, sweet and productive. In no way did she challenge the little bastage. He just felt like killing something.

My best boy was a random mutt, grabbed out of a large flock of wildish chickens solely because he was the only one nearby and gifted to me by a frazzled friend who said "I got way too many, you need a roo? Want this one?". Best bird I ever owned.
Raising them right? Naw. Proper handling? Naw. Genetics? Maybe. Luck? Heck yes!

It doesn't sound like you've ever actually tried to work with any rooster who behaved aggressively, though. From what you've said there, it sounds like whenever you get one who doesn't do what you want, you're convinced he's "bad." You don't even try to understand his behavior, just label him as a "psycho."

As you've never learned any techniques to work with roosters (very few have, this is definitely a new approach), it's not at all surprising you think luck determines your relationship with a rooster. When you've already decided that some are born "good" and some "bad," you lose the ability to empathize with the "bad" ones. But when you approach rooster aggression instead with a problem-solving attitude, you tend to be able to solve the problem.

The difference with this approach is if a rooster becomes aggressive, you don't say, "Oh I was always kind to him and raised him right, therefore he's just bad." You say, "Interesting. I wonder what's going on with him - Let's work on figuring it out."

Hence, you have "luck" that gives you a good or bad rooster, whereas I have never in my life met a bad rooster. Have I had some pretty challenging behavior problems? Yes. Have I been able to fix those behavior problems? Yes.

Training roosters isn't for everyone - you really do have to be motivated to put in the effort of learning how to train them and the time to do it. But if people aren't willing to do that, it doesn't make their roosters bad.

I could be wrong - perhaps if I met some of your roosters, I would have found myself in the same place you did, but I've always found them to be pretty malleable with the right approach, even if they initially were trying to kill me.

 

[Rachel TW]

I am not ridiculing or shaming anyone, I am being realistic about how much you can "train" a rooster. I agree that YOU can learn to move slowly and avoid triggers that make the rooster freak out, and you can bribe him to sit on your lap. If you ever slip up, he attacks again. Not to mention unfamiliar kids that might run through the yard. The Roovolution videos show a "tame" rooster attacking a guy for moving his arm too suddenly. That's what you should expect.

Of course I do not discourage anyone from trying, as long as they know they can't "change" a rooster. Personally, I have wasted too many years of my life trying to "tame" aggressive males with kindness. Not just roosters, either.

You're incredibly incorrect that if you ever slip up, he attacks you again, or that you're just bribing him to sit on your lap. That's a complete misrepresentation of the process.

Training is similar to training dogs - sometimes your dog may forget a command or start a bad habit again, and you just spend a short amount of time retraining. It's not a big deal and doesn't mean the dog's bad. We have a shepherd who was trained to not jump on people when she gets excited. She went 4 years without jumping on people. This Christmas she started jumping on people again. It wasn't a big deal. She's not bad. We just worked with her again, didn't take long. That's exactly how it is with roosters too.

But with the logic you've used, you must think dogs aren't really trainable either then? And when you get a shelter dog who's scared or uneasy at first, but then warms up to you and turns cuddly - you've really just bribed him into your lap during the period you trained him? And for some reason, he continues getting in your lap all the time (even years later, still doing it) even though you have no "bribes"?

Do you think there can be no real affection or relationship change possible with an animal? You're essentially saying that even though a rooster may be a total sweetheart now, never having attacked anyone for years, he's actually not sweet at all, because we know he was born "bad" and therefore cannot be capable of change. That's not true for dogs and it's not true for roosters either.

Indeed, training roosters isn't for everyone - you really do have to be motivated to put in the effort of learning how to train them and the time to do it. But if a person isn't willing to do that, it doesn't make their roosters bad. But for anyone who loves their feisty boy, there's a lot you can do besides killing him.

 

[sdm111]

Handling gamefowl repetitively I don't think they want to be held. They walk to the door of the pen expecting to be held through repetitive action. To me it's more habit forming to them. I don't believe they "want" to, it's just what is to be done. If that makes sense

 

[Rachel TW]

Handling gamefowl repetitively I don't think they want to be held. They walk to the door of the pen expecting to be held through repetitive action. To me it's more habit forming to them. I don't believe they "want" to, it's just what is to be done. If that makes sense

That does make sense.

I've had something similar to that with some of my birds. For example, I had a special needs chicken who I had to feed separately in my house twice a day. When she saw me coming outside she'd sprint over and squat in front of my feet - her way of asking me to pick her up. I don't think she got any pleasure from being picked up and carried - she just wanted to be taken to her food.

However, with many of my other chickens, they actually do very much enjoy being held. I sit outside with them and they crawl all over me - many nuzzle my chest until I hug them. Some fly into my arms when they see me coming. They love to preen my hair.

I think chickens are capable of many different types of physical interactions - some habitual, some affectionate, and some aggressive.

 

[SarahGfa]

You're incredibly incorrect that if you ever slip up, he attacks you again, or that you're just bribing him to sit on your lap. That's a complete misrepresentation of the process.

Training is similar to training dogs - sometimes your dog may forget a command or start a bad habit again, and you just spend a short amount of time retraining. It's not a big deal and doesn't mean the dog's bad. We have a shepherd who was trained to not jump on people when she gets excited. She went 4 years without jumping on people. This Christmas she started jumping on people again. It wasn't a big deal. She's not bad. We just worked with her again, didn't take long. That's exactly how it is with roosters too.

But with the logic you've used, you must think dogs aren't really trainable either then? And when you get a shelter dog who's scared or uneasy at first, but then warms up to you and turns cuddly - you've really just bribed him into your lap during the period you trained him? And for some reason, he continues getting in your lap all the time (even years later, still doing it) even though you have no "bribes"?

Do you think there can be no real affection or relationship change possible with an animal? You're essentially saying that even though a rooster may be a total sweetheart now, never having attacked anyone for years, he's actually not sweet at all, because we know he was born "bad" and therefore cannot be capable of change. That's not true for dogs and it's not true for roosters either.

Indeed, training roosters isn't for everyone - you really do have to be motivated to put in the effort of learning how to train them and the time to do it. But if a person isn't willing to do that, it doesn't make their roosters bad. But for anyone who loves their feisty boy, there's a lot you can do besides killing him.

I never used the word "bad" anywhere because I am not judgemental towards animals like that. Roosters respond to their own biology, there's nothing "good" or "bad" about it.

You can use your own words if you want but we are talking about the same thing--treats/bribes/Pavlov conditioning/etc. Stop training for a while, or introduce some new stimulus, and the rooster goes back to the old behavior.

 

[Rachel TW]

I never used the word "bad" anywhere because I am not judgemental towards animals like that. Roosters respond to their own biology, there's nothing "good" or "bad" about it.

You can use your own words if you want but we are talking about the same thing--treats/bribes/Pavlov conditioning/etc. Stop training for a while, or introduce some new stimulus, and the rooster goes back to the old behavior.

You used the words "mean" and "nice." Those are unquestionably human judgments.

As someone who actually trains roosters, that's just not true. I have many roosters who have never gone back to their old behavior.

Much of Pavlov has been discredited/outdated - that's not an appropriate model to use for understanding rooster behavior. I highly recommend the book, "Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?" by biologist Frans de Waal if you want to understand the current science.

 

[SarahGfa]

You used the words "mean" and "nice." Those are unquestionably human judgments.

"mean" and "nice" describe the behavior in a way that everyone understands. it is same for "aggressive" and "docile".

As someone who actually trains roosters, that's just not true. I have many roosters who have never gone back to their old behavior.

Please, tell us about it. All the accounts I have seen make me think the best-possible outcome is that the caretakers learn to avoid certain triggers and requires lifelong training. If you know how to permanently change a rooster, please tell us about it. You won't believe me, but I am a huge rooster advocate in my neighborhood and I have taken my rooster to the park and other social places to show people how "nice" a nice rooster can be.