Quote: Yeah, hope so, but don't know and somehow doubt it. As we talked it became clear that he is of a restrictive interpretation of one of the main religions, and it seemed his family were refusing to accept his problems needing treatment on the basis of their religion, even though the issues were medically verified, and they were somewhat against him receiving treatment, even though he lived in a place where he ought to have been able to easily access high-quality medical help.
Not very hopeful. Haven't heard from him in a fair while, last we talked he was going in for more tests and needed anesthetic but his religion disallowed that too. The family member of mine who had the same symptoms as the young man is doing great, which is a massive turnaround from being almost at the point of being officially recognized as disabled due to the severity of his problems.
Quote: Most countries have some native fruits that turn alcoholic as part of their ripening process, and many species are known to congregate and get drunk when the opportunity presents itself. Perhaps you have such a fruiting plant in your area? Maybe your rooster's the only one who's tried them though. Random idea, lol. Birds are able to consume many berries that are poisonous to us, and there's always the odd individual in the flock or herd that eats something none of the others will touch. Or, perhaps, he tried something he shouldn't have and gave himself nausea and dizziness through toxicity. Even genetic problems are often cyclic too though.
Quote: My experiences have been the same, they can quickly forget what roosters are about if you don't keep any, and then the whole situation can just remain negative even when the rooster you've introduced is doing his best to be nice.
For the whole flock's sake I think keeping a (good) rooster (multiple roosters in my case) is actually more peaceful and beneficial than not. Many people recommend getting rid of roosters to bring peace, which is a bit of a sad statement on the hen's mentalities, being unable to cope within a natural family structure. Unless you're talking about a bad rooster, everyone's glad to see the back of those, lol!
Quote: This is a good example of how quickly the failure of family instinct can be restored, sometimes it's just as simple as reawakening instinct that's going 'dormant' for lack of stimulation and reinforcement, and just watching normal interactions can do that. In a yardstick/measuring sense, your experience there is the same as mine in terms of how quickly you can establish a flock with good social harmony between the genders. There are numerous studies done on many species including chickens that demonstrate how swift they are to learn something just by watching another of their kind.
If you bred from your anti-rooster hens, I'd bet you'd see the daughters are very rooster-friendly, because even if the older hens aren't showing it, they will be slightly changed by just living within a more natural family circumstance. I'd bet you could get good mothers among the daughters of those hens even if they themselves will never go broody or show any interest in chicks.
Sometimes the instincts remain dormant in expression within the individual's lifetime even if they are strengthened by life experience within the parent, and you will only see the whole instinct pattern in their offspring. But we can alter instincts very quickly, chickens are pretty highly trainable like that, since reacting to and adjusting to external stimuli during an animal's lifetime is just simply how they manage to survive and pass on beneficial locality/lifestyle-adapted behavioral traits to future generations. Too many people think it takes thousands of years but if you read anything much about animal breeding you can see how rapidly traits can be fixed, both genetic and behavioral, usually within 5 generations in most species, but every parent has their influence and so does the individual life of every animal.
As you say, the family example seems to have helped, in my experience this has always been true and it's very important to raise them together when able as it's the quickest way to achieve a wonderfully peaceful, non-harmful and happy flock. Health and production is higher in happier flocks of course, the less stress and boredom and frustration, the better.
I had some hens who came from segregated breed/family backgrounds who never liked or understood roosters, but over time the males all gravitated away from those hens, to hang out with hens that did like them, and the hens that didn't like the roosters were almost never bothered by them; in fact after a little while of that they started seeking the roosters out but the roosters didn't change their minds on those hens, and never favored them. When you have enough males and females together, they learn discernment, and quickly the least genetically strong and least intelligent birds of both genders end up low on the social order, which doesn't mean they are necessarily bullied, but rather that they are limited to mates of their own caliber because the best males and females have their own groups and won't mate with 'lower grade' ones.
Many believe that when you let animals choose their own mates, the grade quickly gets poor in the resulting offspring, but in my experience birds with good enough instincts improve on their genetic lines, not degrade them. I guess if you take flocks of the least intelligent/instinctive birds and let them breed as they will, you end up with some bad mating patterns as their instincts are warped and weakened, and they come directly from breeds and family lines that via our typically restrictive husbandry regarding high production factory farmed birds, have very neurotic and hyper aggressive social instincts.
The experiment would benefit from people giving the birds a few generation's grace period living in normal family flocks to rekindle instincts so they can then be let to operate from there onwards and see where they take it. Very controversial subject there, it's currently the popular opinion that animals picking mates leads to rapid degrading of the quality of the average individual, yet we value landraces enough to point out the fault in assuming animal selection rather than human selection is all bad, lol.
Current scientific research is indicating female selection of mates is vitally important in many species, but one wouldn't want to apply that in practice to hens who don't even know what a rooster is. In my experience the female animal's selection of mates is a better final guide to the breeding program's best matches than the human's selections. I have learned over time to let my hens have the final say, because the majority of the time they are right, often especially in areas where we 'disagreed' over the quality of the male in question, and I thought he was quite a specimen but the hens didn't.
The most instinctive hens do most certainly want roosters around, it's one of their prerequisites for being content, and they will pine and complain if you get rid of all roosters, and will even abandon your place to go find roosters if they can hear distant crowing from a far-away neighbor's place.
I'm glad my previous reply was of some use to you, it's good to know, as I'm aware I do 'rabbit on' sometimes, lol! Sometimes you can get the impression you're crazy because so many people have such a different experience and some will even describe yours as either a figment of your (probably overheated, anthropomorphized) imagination or just plain unhealthy.
Quote: Does he sleep in a separate coop? Or is he just enamored of certain hens who don't normally keep company with him?
Not very hopeful. Haven't heard from him in a fair while, last we talked he was going in for more tests and needed anesthetic but his religion disallowed that too. The family member of mine who had the same symptoms as the young man is doing great, which is a massive turnaround from being almost at the point of being officially recognized as disabled due to the severity of his problems.
Quote: Most countries have some native fruits that turn alcoholic as part of their ripening process, and many species are known to congregate and get drunk when the opportunity presents itself. Perhaps you have such a fruiting plant in your area? Maybe your rooster's the only one who's tried them though. Random idea, lol. Birds are able to consume many berries that are poisonous to us, and there's always the odd individual in the flock or herd that eats something none of the others will touch. Or, perhaps, he tried something he shouldn't have and gave himself nausea and dizziness through toxicity. Even genetic problems are often cyclic too though.
Quote: My experiences have been the same, they can quickly forget what roosters are about if you don't keep any, and then the whole situation can just remain negative even when the rooster you've introduced is doing his best to be nice.
For the whole flock's sake I think keeping a (good) rooster (multiple roosters in my case) is actually more peaceful and beneficial than not. Many people recommend getting rid of roosters to bring peace, which is a bit of a sad statement on the hen's mentalities, being unable to cope within a natural family structure. Unless you're talking about a bad rooster, everyone's glad to see the back of those, lol!
Quote: This is a good example of how quickly the failure of family instinct can be restored, sometimes it's just as simple as reawakening instinct that's going 'dormant' for lack of stimulation and reinforcement, and just watching normal interactions can do that. In a yardstick/measuring sense, your experience there is the same as mine in terms of how quickly you can establish a flock with good social harmony between the genders. There are numerous studies done on many species including chickens that demonstrate how swift they are to learn something just by watching another of their kind.
If you bred from your anti-rooster hens, I'd bet you'd see the daughters are very rooster-friendly, because even if the older hens aren't showing it, they will be slightly changed by just living within a more natural family circumstance. I'd bet you could get good mothers among the daughters of those hens even if they themselves will never go broody or show any interest in chicks.
Sometimes the instincts remain dormant in expression within the individual's lifetime even if they are strengthened by life experience within the parent, and you will only see the whole instinct pattern in their offspring. But we can alter instincts very quickly, chickens are pretty highly trainable like that, since reacting to and adjusting to external stimuli during an animal's lifetime is just simply how they manage to survive and pass on beneficial locality/lifestyle-adapted behavioral traits to future generations. Too many people think it takes thousands of years but if you read anything much about animal breeding you can see how rapidly traits can be fixed, both genetic and behavioral, usually within 5 generations in most species, but every parent has their influence and so does the individual life of every animal.
As you say, the family example seems to have helped, in my experience this has always been true and it's very important to raise them together when able as it's the quickest way to achieve a wonderfully peaceful, non-harmful and happy flock. Health and production is higher in happier flocks of course, the less stress and boredom and frustration, the better.
I had some hens who came from segregated breed/family backgrounds who never liked or understood roosters, but over time the males all gravitated away from those hens, to hang out with hens that did like them, and the hens that didn't like the roosters were almost never bothered by them; in fact after a little while of that they started seeking the roosters out but the roosters didn't change their minds on those hens, and never favored them. When you have enough males and females together, they learn discernment, and quickly the least genetically strong and least intelligent birds of both genders end up low on the social order, which doesn't mean they are necessarily bullied, but rather that they are limited to mates of their own caliber because the best males and females have their own groups and won't mate with 'lower grade' ones.
Many believe that when you let animals choose their own mates, the grade quickly gets poor in the resulting offspring, but in my experience birds with good enough instincts improve on their genetic lines, not degrade them. I guess if you take flocks of the least intelligent/instinctive birds and let them breed as they will, you end up with some bad mating patterns as their instincts are warped and weakened, and they come directly from breeds and family lines that via our typically restrictive husbandry regarding high production factory farmed birds, have very neurotic and hyper aggressive social instincts.
The experiment would benefit from people giving the birds a few generation's grace period living in normal family flocks to rekindle instincts so they can then be let to operate from there onwards and see where they take it. Very controversial subject there, it's currently the popular opinion that animals picking mates leads to rapid degrading of the quality of the average individual, yet we value landraces enough to point out the fault in assuming animal selection rather than human selection is all bad, lol.
Current scientific research is indicating female selection of mates is vitally important in many species, but one wouldn't want to apply that in practice to hens who don't even know what a rooster is. In my experience the female animal's selection of mates is a better final guide to the breeding program's best matches than the human's selections. I have learned over time to let my hens have the final say, because the majority of the time they are right, often especially in areas where we 'disagreed' over the quality of the male in question, and I thought he was quite a specimen but the hens didn't.
The most instinctive hens do most certainly want roosters around, it's one of their prerequisites for being content, and they will pine and complain if you get rid of all roosters, and will even abandon your place to go find roosters if they can hear distant crowing from a far-away neighbor's place.
I'm glad my previous reply was of some use to you, it's good to know, as I'm aware I do 'rabbit on' sometimes, lol! Sometimes you can get the impression you're crazy because so many people have such a different experience and some will even describe yours as either a figment of your (probably overheated, anthropomorphized) imagination or just plain unhealthy.
Quote: Does he sleep in a separate coop? Or is he just enamored of certain hens who don't normally keep company with him?
