Our rooster keeps attacking us

JudyR · Aug 6, 2008

We have a grey and white rooster, he's pretty big I guess, and he does an excellent job of taking care of the chickens. We allow them to free range on our farm, we have about 18 chickens and one rooster. We used to have two roosters who were raised together and before we got the chickens they were both friendly (as in they never attacked). After we got the chickens one rooster died. They started fighting. Now we get attacked from the remaining rooster. He seems to go out of his way sometimes. We don't want to hurt him because he does his job very well, such as letting us know if all the chickens don't return to the coop and we have coyotes around but they haven't bothered anybody. The cats ignore the chickens also because the roosters put them straight right away. Any suggestions to make him friendly or to stop the attacks? We sprayed him with a water bottle but that only worked until we ran out of water. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

cjeanean · Aug 6, 2008

I don't have any advice from experience to help you with your roo, although there are several people on here who know a lot about them and their behaviors. I'll try to find the member who has a page on roo behavior. This is the wrong forum for this question, but don't worry, a mod will see it and move it for you. Welcome, and feel free to browse the forum archives using the 'search' feature. There are thousands of helpful posts for chicken lovers new to the site! Also, if you can't find an answer to a question or need quick help, don't hesitate to ask. No question is a stupid question!!! Good luck!

Christina

cjeanean · Aug 6, 2008

Here's the link to his page:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=2588-Roo_behavior

Hope this helps!

purr · Aug 6, 2008

when my roosters get uppity I pick them up and have a little talk with them walk around the yard holding them lets them know your first in the pecking order. I like to recite good soup recipe's while carrying them around the yard if one of them goes to attack me I go after it with a vengeance, they know I'm the boss. If one gets too bad it will be soup.
red rooster on this site has good advice about roosters , you can do a search for his posts.

good luck

redoak · Aug 6, 2008

One of my roosters turned on me, but after one day of following the advice given on BYC he's not aggressive anymore towards me or my wife.

JudyR · Aug 7, 2008

Thank you so much for your sound sensible advice. Proves that common sense is still out there. We will start our new program tomorrow. The timely response we received from our post was amazing. We were at our wit's end as our daughter-in-law had to jump the railing on our deck yesterday to get away from him. She looked like she was practicing for the rodeo. Will keep you advised of our progress. Great site. Glad we found it.

ridgefire · Aug 7, 2008

Remember to be consistant at it. If your not he will challege you for the Alpha spot.

needmorechickens! · Aug 7, 2008

Hi and Welcome!

I don't have any better advice than you've already got. I hope he doesn't have to be removed, but some roosters never change!

Hang in there!

~Rebecca

rooster-red · Aug 7, 2008

Hope the info on my page will help.

MarylandChick · Aug 10, 2008

I just always keep a rake handy! My roo attacks me occasionally and my husband always said he didn't believe me because he never saw it happen. I litterally won't go near the hens without a rake. If I have a rake in hand that roo doesn't even think about messing with me. But the other day my [email protected]@rd rooster attacked my husband and I was in the middle of laughing "See! I told you he's evil!" when my husband lifted his hand and slapped that rooster in the face. I never saw anyone slap an animal before. He didn't do it hard but not light either. He slapped him in the way you would slap someone who says something really obsene about your mother! The rooster kind of stood himself up tussed his feathers around a bit and then ran the heck away from us. To be honest, the rooster has been well behaved ever since.

I'm not advocating for slapping animals. In fact if it was anyone else I would scream "ANIMAL ABUSE!" but honestly this rooster tottaly had it coming! This was the same rooster who chased me around the house 4 months ago! When he comes at ya' it is terrifying. He comes flying at your thigh like something out of the Matrix movies. He beats on you with his wings while kicking the [email protected] out of you and pecking like crazy. There's no way you can reach your arms out and catch him when he gets like that.