Please verify if this are hen or roo if you can :) Please

At what age do the hormones kick in? And yes he is a Roo took him to a friend who confirmed, and after posting this i kinda paid attention to his demenor and realized that he does act like a roo. But he is super sweet is why i am wondering what age this happens? I only have 3 chickens has of right now, I have been waiting to get moved into our new house before i got anymore. Its so funny though cause he really is the sweetest outta the bunch. If i am going to put them up for the night he is the first one that comes running when i call with the other two following behind. He always comes when i call and follows me everywhere. The other two (an Amber star which we are not sure if she its a hen or a roo, and a cochin bantam hen) are friendly but at the same time they dont seem to enjoy the attention like him. They come when i call but only cause they are following him(unless they see i have food of course) If they are distressed because they get seperated they will come running to me as well. Now if my amber turns out to be a roo then it will have to be given to my friend who is going to give me a hen in return for him. I am excited to go pick up my RIR hen tomorrow from her, and she is currently looking for a barred hen for me as well. So looks like i will have a pair LOL . Do you guys think that my bantam will be ok If i trade my amber to another bantam? So i will have 3 heavy breeds and 2 small breeds together? 1 heavy being a roo? They seem together now, but i figured if i am going to be adding 2 more heavies to the mix(well really 1 if i trade her my amber) then it may be better to add another bantam. What do you guys think?

My roo has started crowing steadily this week, and he is almost 13 weeks old. Other than that, I haven't seen any rooster behaviors such as mounting, guarding, or food sharing. (He will not be full grown for a few more months.) He acts mostly like a dominant hen and seems much more interested in food than than roostering (the big pig). Unlike the hens, however, he will rarely come near me, and I am keeping a watchful eye for any aggressive behavior, for which there will be consequences!

As far as mixing small and large breeds, I hope you hear from folks with more experience. I can only tell you about the flock we had when I was a kid that was mixed bantam (60%) and large breed (40%). We never had any problems, but in our case the rooster was smallish (about as big as the large breed hens), so he never hurt any hens during breeding, and we usually had at least 10 hens with 1 roo (plus maybe a young roo-in-training, as long as they didn't fight). If you have only 1 or 2 bantams, you run the risk of them getting picked on or being overly bred by your big roo. Hope you get more advice about this.

Just a general observation about human and chicken interaction- don't confuse "sweet" behavior toward people with how the chickens act toward each other. I have a very friendly hen (toward me) who is quite aggressive with the other hens, drives them away from the food if she can. Luckily she is the smallest of the bunch (a White Leghorn), and as the large hens are outgrowing her, I am seeing less aggression as the pecking order readjusts.
 
I had just made a post asking if these were pullets or roos. I found this thread very interesting because so far my flock which are reaching the 3 month mark are all very calm and loving as far as the pullets go. We have 8 pullets and two roos. Both the roo's tend to stay away and will even run away if you get close to them. I can pick up any of the pullets luckily. Just this morning I heard a rooster trying to crow. LOL very funny sound! Anyway, I wanted to post a few images of a couple of young br's we just brought home from an Amish family which lives down the road from us. They had about 14 of these which they raised for years from their stock and did not come from a hatchery. I picked them out myself hoping I made the right choice and got two pullets.








Good choice! They are pullets.
 
Ugh. It's so frustrating! I have a 15 wk BR roo who is not nearly that light, though he is lighter than the pullets, but his comb is MUCH larger and very red..no mistaking him!
 

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