Rooster Pens?

[NagemTX]

We are in kinda the same place with this, we have 15-18 Roosters and over 100 hens.
This last batch of chicks we got at the end of last year from Rural King , out of 26 chicks of mix breeds, 9 turned out to be Roosters and for some reason are not nice to the girls. They chase the girls off and eat first, are very rough mating and rape in packs.
Our older Roosters are the more generous ones and we were hoping the tweens would learn from them, but that didn’t happen.
They rarely fight each other so thinking they should be okay in the same coop.

Yikes! Yeah if the girls are getting tag teamed I put all the tiny bopper boys in one pen. No issues with that either.

 

[SourRoses]

Personally, I feel responsible for the lives our hens experience. In the wild, they could run away, so the roos have to treat them nice, or another, worthy roo will.
Since we don't have a lot of pens, we rehome or put down any excess, starting with the rude ones.
Sometimes we have to hold on to some cockerels for a while to really assess their traits. In the past we've had a bachelor pen. It takes a lot of wire to keep hens safe from them though.

Now, I'm interested again in the idea of tie outs.
There's a good thread around here somewhere that I read years ago explaining how to do it humanely. It's one of those things that is easier to misuse than to do it right, which is why I didn't try it sooner. I'm looking at a lot of cockerel chicks this season and need to keep a few for various traits into fall/winter hatching season to catch up from a slow spring.

 

[RememberTheWay]

A lot is going to depend on what you have to work with. These were taken while we were still building. This space was originally an open lean-to that was completely stacked to the ceiling with trash/metal (guy we bought it from hoarded everything). We cleaned it out and converted it to three pens and an area for feed/storage. The last pen on the end is my new brooder room where I put the broody hens and raise chicks. The middle one is my “butcher pen” where I put my cockerels that I hatch out so they can’t get to my hens and the closest one to the end door that you can’t see is for my layers and one rooster I keep with them. It’s not perfect, but my husband and did all of the work ourselves. The pictures again are not the finished project so they don’t show the industrial Ag grade ventilation fans we installed, additional regular horse stall fans in each pen for the summer, finished covering the end wall with metal, added 2x4 roosts and another window we added on the far end so it’s not so dark down there during the day. We also added nesting boxes to the butcher pen. We keep the boxes blocked off while the cockerels are in there. When we butcher the them up for the year we open up the nesting boxes and the little door on the divider wall between the butcher and laying pens. That way the girls can use the empty pen during the winter. It’s just nice for the girls to have more indoor space when it’s -20F with 40mph winds to prevent any behavioral problems. Both the butcher and laying pen have doors that can be opened to lead to a 6’ tall fenced area that is I can’t remember, but either 60x40’ or 60x60’. Either way plenty of space to keep the boys from getting too aggressive with each other being penned up. I only keep the butcher pens door open to that area and the hens free range during the day.
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How do you feel about them being on gravel now? Curious minds