Picking roosters - ugh!

[Shadrach]

So here's a thing.
I've known a lot of cockerels and I've never known what they are likely to be like as roosters until they're around eighteen months or more, and more imprortantly, have observed them within a group of other chickens.
You could keep a fine looking young chap with seemingly excellent manners in a rooster group, only to find that when he gets amoung the hens he turns into a bit of a nightmare. Rarely impossible to sort out but a nightmare none the less.
Having a senior rooster helps. The cockerel being offspring of the senior rooster and one of his hens helps.
But, in the end it's the hens that straighten the cockerels out.
In a free range setting ambushing the occasional unguarded hen might convince a cockerel he is furthering his genes for a short while but eventualy he realises that he needs to get a couple or three hens to follow him and that is going to require a rather different strategy than ambush.
Whether any of this translate to a confined environment I have no real means of judging but no matter how he is kept it's going to take eighteen months or more for him to mature and until he does, there is no way of knowing what he will be like for the future.

 

[Dragon Slayer Trinket]

How many hens do you have?

I have three roosters and a cockerel for about twenty five hens and four pullets. Everyone gets along great.
Funny thing happened today; my cockerel is starting to notice the girls, but he's ignoring his hatchmates. Went after two brahma hens 4 to 5 times his size. Hilarious.

 

[Mrs. K]

Well they are all still with the flock. I do have a great deal of space in the run, and coop, and I am not picking up on any tension. I am free ranging most of the day, and I have one of the best roosters that I have had in years, but he is just a mutt. I am in a rebuilding mode.

I know come September/October I need to be down to about 5-8 hens + one rooster. Right now I have 24 birds, 5 mature birds, 12 about 9 weeks old, and 7 chicks maybe two weeks old. Because it is summer, and because most of these are not full sized, you can cheat a bit.

One mature rooster, 7 immature roosters, and 2-3? (I hatched out and added 5 pullets). So I kind of thought, if I could move out anything I didn't like, I could watch what I left and see what I see.
I have one white leghorn - which was not on the keep side due to his color. He tends to hang with the mature rooster...which surprised me. At first I thought is this a good sign? But now I am thinking maybe not enough respect - getting too bold, might lead to a fight. I don't like his color.

I do have a barred rooster, that a week ago, I heard try and crow... he too was on the not keep list - but I have and see Ridgerunner post before and now, that she likes an early maturing rooster. However, have not heard him crow again. I don't really like the pillow ticking color of the barred males, the pullet is a very lovely bird.

Part of me says, look you have a fantastic rooster and he is a mutt - so what, you are not breeding purebred lines. I like a mixed flock.

The two cockerels - a light brown and dark brown leghorn rooster, are the two I think I might like, already their colors are coming in beautiful.

You can way over think this.

Mrs K

 

[Mrs. K]

Well in the last few days, I can feel the tension rising in my flock, the cockerels are really being pains to the hens, the chicks, and pullets. And my rooster Bye is stressed with all this.

So I pulled 6 of them, set them up in an old coop. Little bit of crowing, but not bad. Left one cockerel - a dark brown leghorn that is purple in places - very pretty.

The first day, things were still discombobulated. But today, things were much more relaxed in the main coop.

I have one more cut to make, to get to my fall number goal... and to reduce my feed bill.

This chicken math is hard.

Mrs K