Rooster behavior

[r0bz]

With a 4 year old child and the chickens all in the same place, he needs to go immediately. He will attack the child at head level, possibly knocking him down, his feet and beak can leave vicious scratches.

The rooster has given you his warning that he is becoming aggressive. Most inexperienced people vastly underestimate the violence of an attack. They often times try to make excuses for the aggressive behavior. He may back off from you for a while, but he will be watching your child to get a lick in, and more than likely he will attack you again.

Most 4 year olds do run around, that is normal, natural, and healthy behavior, the very behavior that triggered his attack.

If you have kids visit your house, you could be liable for an attack.

I just cannot emphasize enough, that the rooster needs to be contained immediately and culled in whatever way you can do it.

Mrs K

this is an accurate comment couldn't write it better myself

 

[JohnTheChickenMan]

Culling is the simple process of eliminating inferior animals from your flock and definitely not breeding them. All domesticated animals have been selectively bred from the best individuals that display the traits u are looking for.
You breed as many as u can to increase your chances of finding the best specimen to use as a broodcock (or hen)
Every domesticated animal was once wild and have had the "wild" or crazy untrustworthy behaviours bred out. Sometimes in a breeding program they will rear their ugly head and when they do u kill them.

 

[Liz Birdlover]

Perhaps I misspoke but thats what meant. I'm in charge and bigger fall in line.

You are...
The Leader of the Pack!

 

[Clodill4rel]

Once you offer a foot, then they think it is go time. I have trained my roosters, that anytime they are near me they get picked up. Soon they don't come near or they want to be picked up. Using a foot, or a broom promotes bad behavior in a chicken. Never show fear walk with purpose and if they pretend to eat around you they will attack soon, pick them up instead or try to.

If they eat around you it means they will become aggressive ? Our rooster now comes to us and we feed and he calls the hens over n we leave them alone and it has been fine…. He hasn’t shown any aggression thus far the second he does he’s gone….he is still young about 10 months old.

 

[CoopBoots]

If they eat around you it means they will become aggressive ? Our rooster now comes to us and we feed and he calls the hens over n we leave them alone and it has been fine…. He hasn’t shown any aggression thus far the second he does he’s gone….he is still young about 10 months old.

PRETEND to eat. Not actually eat. My stinker will walk a circle around me, never NOT looking towards me, and pick up and drop dead brown grass, sticks, peck at literal nothing. This is a precursor to an attack once you incorrectly suppose he's just really into eating dead grass and he thinks he's got the drop on you.

 

[Clodill4rel]

PRETEND to eat. Not actually eat. My stinker will walk a circle around me, never NOT looking towards me, and pick up and drop dead brown grass, sticks, peck at literal nothing. This is a precursor to an attack once you incorrectly suppose he's just really into eating dead grass and he thinks he's got the drop on you.

Interesting well I’m watching my guy than……. We go over there multiple times a day and obviously feed them treats but he does walk closely to me and pick things up when nothing is there but I usually grabs some goods for em n then he call the hens n I walk away. We had an extremely aggressive rooster before actually our first one it was just absolutely horrific so I didn’t even know about nice non human aggressive ones till I got on here and someone left this guy here on our property. We have been giving him a chance for the last 5 months but now that u tell me this I’ll be watching him really closely. Any other advice or behaviors I should be looking to see? Honestly being attacked is horrible our other one did it every time I walked out the door it got so bad I couldn’t even leave the house without him running a half mile to get me! It was insane! Yeah he’s been eatin now.

 

[Eden83_haaretz]

If they eat around you it means they will become aggressive ? Our rooster now comes to us and we feed and he calls the hens over n we leave them alone and it has been fine…. He hasn’t shown any aggression thus far the second he does he’s gone….he is still young about 10 months old.

From our experience with our rooster, I'd say that him pecking and eating near you isn't necessarily a sign of an attack. But I have noticed what was mentioned about picking up dry grass when he's stating his territory with other roosters in the flock. Our rooster walks amongst us even eats around us with the girls; has never attacked.
I've always walked slowly around them and I see that all this time paying attention to their stress levels helps.
Plus they are way smarter than what people give them credit for, they notice when you are a member in their flock that helps and provides. Whenever he calls out that there is a predator near we run out to scare them off.
Having said all this you also have to show them what you like and what you don't. Our rooster has chased after other cockrels and we always shout out "no", come between them and chase him away; he now knows the word no and stops whatever he's doing something we don't like.
Chickens I think like any other animal need constant human interaction to form some sort of trust relationship with their owners.
I have had chickens that were distrusting at first, would attack me if I came near their chicks, but I've gained their trust and those same chickens allow me to feed their chicks from my hand and allow me to take their chicks and pet them. You just have to work at it and see what they like and don't like.

 

[Mrs. K]

What I consider to be traits of aggression:

• incessant crowing when you come into the pen
• fluffing up to make themselves look big
• hopping up on a roost to make them taller than you
• sneaking around to your backside
• staring at you, giving the stink eye, then pretending he wasn't
• Coming straight towards you when you come into the pen. A lot of people think of this as friendliness. It is not.
• getting closer than 5 feet towards you. My roosters need to keep a 5 foot space between us. Not a panicked space, just a gentle moving out of my way.

I no longer train my roosters. Either they have it or they don't. I do not believe, that a few minutes out of 24, will have a lasting effect, as most of the day I am not there. I think that most long term posters get like me, in the beginning we tolerated a rotten rooster way too long, finding excuses for them, trying this, that to improve things.

I have had a rooster in my flock for years, some have been flock masters, some not so much. But the best training for an aggressive rooster is a sharp knife. You will wonder afterwards why it took you so long to do it. Roosters have ruined the whole chicken affair for a lot of people.

If you can't cull a rooster, do not risk having one in your flock.

Mrs K

 

[Clodill4rel]

From our experience with our rooster, I'd say that him pecking and eating near you isn't necessarily a sign of an attack. But I have noticed what was mentioned about picking up dry grass when he's stating his territory with other roosters in the flock. Our rooster walks amongst us even eats around us with the girls; has never attacked.
I've always walked slowly around them and I see that all this time paying attention to their stress levels helps.
Plus they are way smarter than what people give them credit for, they notice when you are a member in their flock that helps and provides. Whenever he calls out that there is a predator near we run out to scare them off.
Having said all this you also have to show them what you like and what you don't. Our rooster has chased after other cockrels and we always shout out "no", come between them and chase him away; he now knows the word no and stops whatever he's doing something we don't like.
Chickens I think like any other animal need constant human interaction to form some sort of trust relationship with their owners.
I have had chickens that were distrusting at first, would attack me if I came near their chicks, but I've gained their trust and those same chickens allow me to feed their chicks from my hand and allow me to take their chicks and pet them. You just have to work at it and see what they like and don't like.

What about if he cleans himself around us and stares at us….. he only started this behavior this week so it’s new to us and why I am paying such close attention is we had a horrific experience with a rooster before and honestly I don’t want an issue. We have learned to really like him being there for our hens n he is doing a really great job at HIS JOB…. But I am noticing some behaviors changing and I’m curious if he will become mean …. So he literally just came up n watched my husband and I n we stood there for 5 mins and he started cleaning himself…… he pecs a few times sometimes and than usually walks off but he stood there for over 5 mins just staring….he also had one foot tucked up is that a hood or bad sign or anything at all? He stands a lot of one foot …. When he’s near us

 

[Eden83_haaretz]

What about if he cleans himself around us and stares at us….. he only started this behavior this week so it’s new to us and why I am paying such close attention is we had a horrific experience with a rooster before and honestly I don’t want an issue. We have learned to really like him being there for our hens n he is doing a really great job at HIS JOB…. But I am noticing some behaviors changing and I’m curious if he will become mean …. So he literally just came up n watched my husband and I n we stood there for 5 mins and he started cleaning himself…… he pecs a few times sometimes and than usually walks off but he stood there for over 5 mins just staring….he also had one foot tucked up is that a hood or bad sign or anything at all? He stands a lot of one foot …. When he’s near us

Well like I mentioned before, it just from our experience with our rooster and all his sons (which I can say have been substancial, about 10 and most have stayed until they've started trying to mate with the other chickens; we've sold them or given them away).
Staring at you isn't necessarily bad, our rooster does it all the time (usually he's waiting to see if we give him a treat since we try to make him associate us with food and good treatment of his chickens). If he cleans himself I'd say he's so trusting of you that he's confortable putting himself in a vulnerable position; our rooster does this too.
Remember that since he's young he'll have lots of energy (mostly sexual in nature and first and foremost he'll look to protect his chickens) as long as you don't stress his chickens and make them scream in fear or anything similar, then he won't associate you as a threat.

Keep watching his behavior, you'll learn to distinguish their sounds and know when they give alerts regarding predators, if they're hungry, if they are happy or stressed. We we're blessed to live 24/7 with our animals (bees included) and among our orchard. Our chickens free range but always stay near the houe because they know at any time we might give them a treat, so they always come out of bushes and run happily towards us. They even have the nerve to come in and eat the cats food or wait and chatter till I open the fridge and give them something.

I have to say that maybe we were lucky to have our rooster and our chickens, but we have changed distrusting chickens into attention demanding/seeking mongers ; I do love it though ...