Rooster mounting "underage" chicken

[du808]

Hi everyone,

Just had an incident where our mature Australorp rooster mounted one of our 8-9 week old Welsummer's.

Can anyone advise if this can be avoided other than separation from the younger chickens? Is there a risk of injury? What should we do, if anything?

The rooster is a great rooster and always looks after the flock and we believe this is the first occurrence.

Thanks.

 

[CMV]

Yeah, that definitely needs to be discouraged. A full grown Australorp can seriously injure such a small pullet. As for how you would stop it- they will need to be separated. Maybe it was just a one-off thing that won't have a repeat.

If you see it happening again, then the birds will need to be kept apart until those pullets mature a bit more. He's going to break them otherwise.

Good luck.

 

[du808]

Yeah, that definitely needs to be discouraged. A full grown Australorp can seriously injure such a small pullet. As for how you would stop it- they will need to be separated. Maybe it was just a one-off thing that won't have a repeat.

If you see it happening again, then the birds will need to be kept apart until those pullets mature a bit more. He's going to break them otherwise.

Good luck.

Hi CMV,

Thanks for the advice, much appreciated.