Roos

[rsarns]

I have an very nice WHeaten Marans who is about 6 months old, he was raised with my hens and another just a bit older roo. Well my other Roo got very aggressive about 5 weeks ago, so we sent him to freezer camp. This WHeaten had never even crowed until a week after I culled the other. THen I was worried he would never come around with the hens.... well I have 3 other young cockerels, 2 very bnice FBCM's and a Cuckoo, that were in the coop and run right next to them. Well after the crowing wars between the 2 FBCM's and the WHeaten I decided to put them into the same coop run area.... Not a very pretty sight. Even though they have seen each other for 12 weeks or so, separated only by chicken wire... the Wheaten (cocoa - as my daughter named him), decided he was going to attack. I stayed out there and let them have their confrontations, hoping they would settle it and establish dominance. However, Cocoa would not stop. One of the others got smart and went into the coop and hid, the other just tried to avoid him in the large run (it is 24x24), but Cocoa just every couple of minutes decided to go put a whooping on him. The other just submittedf. I decided to put Cocoa in a time out (in a dog kennel), should I give him a day or so, and then try it again? There are 20+ hens in there, so its not like there is a shortage of hens... This is my layer pen, the 2 young cockerels had been in the grow out pen with some young pullets (their age) before. The young cockerels are about 18 weeks old right now. Any ideas? None of them are aggressive towards me or the family, and I am hoping to keep them for breeders as they are very nice.

 

[donrae]

When you say he wouldn't stop, what kind of time frame are we looking at? That's pretty natural roo behavior, esp when first establishing dominance. It's what more folks here would do better to do to their own roos, truthfully. Keep them on their toes!

 

[rsarns]

He would attack one, step back and then keep going after it. He drew blood. Now I know they will fight a bit to establish dominance, but the others if they couldn't get away would just lay there and he would keep going at them. Only time he would stop is when I would intervene. Guess I will see what a night in the dog kennel does, and put him back in with all of them tomorrow.