Rooster incompetent? Bullying?

[The Rinaest Rina]

Hello. Everything was fine until a few weeks ago. Now my rooster is constantly in my space and challenging me. He will crow and shake his head and then run from across the garden towards me. I have to make sure I have a stick in my hand to fend him off! It's quite scary and slows down everything I do in the garden. I even walk the long way around to avoid him. How do I take back control?

Soup! But if you really want to keep him, you must understand why he does what he does and try to counteract those reasons. With some work you might strike a peace treaty with him, or he might be too set in his ways and genetically aggressive. I've observed (though my experience is somewhat limited) that my roosters only attack me when my boots move too fast towards them. Doesn't quite sound like your situation but it could be somewhat similar- he feels threatened and he wants you out of his territory. Or, if he's trying to land on your back and he dances around you, he might be trying to court you. In which case you must tell him that this is an unacceptable proposal- pin him and give him a hard eye-contact stare. When they're in the throes of puberty and their hormones start to surge they can get pretty excitable. If you make a thread for this question you'll get a lot more advice.

 

[FrostRanger]

Hello. Everything was fine until a few weeks ago. Now my rooster is constantly in my space and challenging me. He will crow and shake his head and then run from across the garden towards me. I have to make sure I have a stick in my hand to fend him off! It's quite scary and slows down everything I do in the garden. I even walk the long way around to avoid him. How do I take back control?

By inviting him to dinner. This behavior is not likely to get better (and is likely to get worse). He should be culled before someone gets hurt

 

[SamLockwood]

Hey y'all. This is not my favorite topic but here we go. I've talked about this guy before, haha.
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This fella here? He's the cornerstone to the castle in my clouds- a homozygous for blue egg guy. I am rather fond of him.
Trouble is, he's a doofus, and I mean that affectionately, but it appears to be true. Just this morning I watched him at feeding time interact with the hens- who have been with him since Christmas- and instead of breeding them he just runs up and pecks them on the neck. One by one they left the coop and went outside to eat mud instead. Then Doofus here was all by himself before he wandered out to join them. This explains why I often find uneaten feed now where I didn't before.
The worst part is that one of my hens is terrified of him. She hates being around him and I had to shut the chickens up yesterday to keep her from standing outside in the rain by herself. He also is chasing my bantams away from the food, though the "chasing" looks a lot like his neck pecking so he could just be trying to mate them. Yes, I have multiple feeding locations.
I've only seen one successful-looking breed from him in his time here. Maybe he hasn't got all of the hormones he needs? Maybe it's the weather?
I did crack open one of the eggs I wanted to hatch, and the bullseye is there. A different rooster was in the run for like thirty seconds about a week ago, so who knows. I guess the best way to tell is to run a test hatch and see if any chicks match his marks, or if there are any chicks.
The people I got him from said he was pretty slow to mature- he was just starting to crow when I got him, allegedly because he had a dominant older brother. He's probably nine or ten months old now.
Is he mean or just fumbling?
Should I separate my scared hen for a bit and try to reintroduce her, similar to what I would do if it was hen bullying?
I mostly wanted an unrelated rooster for my flock, and one that would bring advantageous genes and good personality in while he was at it. This guy is very nice on all points except that he seems like he doesn't know what he's doing and he's scaring the hens in the process.

If he's under a year old, they take time to learn things even if there's an older rooster around to show them what to do. My youngest cockerel would grab a pullet by the neck, get her to squat, and then start humping the ground. I saw him do that for about six weeks before he figured out he was supposed to climb on top of the hen.

Some roosters aren't as brazen, especially if you have more than one in the flock. You won't see them mate, but eggs will turn up fertile anyway.

Overall, you're not really going to know what kind of rooster you have until they're at least a year old. My current alpha rooster was kind of a non-entity at first: skittish around humans, backed down from the other cockerels growing up, and overall I often didn't even notice him. At a year old he took over the flock, and all of the sudden he's crowing, strutting, and overall keeping the flock organized like a tiny feathered drill-sergeant. A year after that he started getting much more human-friendly, not as friendly as the two other roosters but he'd approach instead of scuttling away from me when I came into the yard.