Rooster Problem!

[Pork Pie]

Seems to me like the wing drop is a typical pre-mating behaviour and if so it suggests that he thinks you are one of his girls! There are lots of threads on how to raise roosters, but here's a few things i picked up, and off the top of my head:

1. Never walk around your roo, walk through him - he must move for you.
2. Never allow him to mate in your presence - knock him off the hen if he tries
3. Never let him crow in front of you - thats a sign of dominance and defiance
4. Not every day, but occasionally prevent him from feeding with the hens for a minute or so

Personally, i use a pressurised water spray (the kind one uses for indoor plants) as my weapon of choice. It certainly does the trick and my rooster would run a mile when i picked it up!

At the end of the day, roosters are wired not to be friendly towards humans, but engendering a healthy respect of humans is necessary if they are to survive, and its our responsibility to make sure the a roo understands who is exactly in charge. I did not follow the above guidelines with my first rooster and it attacked me then went in the slow cooker. I did follow them with my second rooster (also in the pot, but thats cos i have no use for him) but all was fine and he never showed any inclination to attack me.

There's lots of opinions on how to deal with roosters, but these are from what i can remember and what i used to do - nothing is written in stone.
All the best
CT

 

[blits0927]

I can tell you that the two that I had problems with, I had to show them who's the boss. I tried the junk I read about backing away and not playing their game but with these two, it didn't work. In my experience, I think what I read was a bunch of crap. Maybe someone has made this work but I had to get rough a couple times and it only changed one of the two roos.

I've heard of the backing away and not engaging thing. But honestly, it seems to me that the rooster would chalk that up as a win for him. I want to send a crystal clear message that aggression will not be tolerated

 

[rIrs roost]

I

I've heard of the backing away and not engaging thing. But honestly, it seems to me that the rooster would chalk that up as a win for him. I want to send a crystal clear message that aggression will not be tolerated

totally agree!

 

[loujeany]

I know I am a few months late here but I just started having the same problem and thought I would pass along what I am trying. I have a 6 month RIR rooster. I have always been cautious of him but he gave me no problems. I didn't plan on a rooster but the hatchery was wrong. He started growing on me and especially when I made them some scrambled eggs one day. He was calling the girls to come eat and 2 of them would not leave the mulch beds. He picked up a chunk of egg and took it over to the hen and dropped it in front of her to eat. He ran back and did the same thing for the other hen. Chivalry is alive and well with chickens. I thought he deserved to stick around just for that reason. Then within a few days things changed. My wife let them out of the coop one day and while she was getting the eggs he came from behind and hit her once. A few days later he came at me and instinct for me was a swift kick to the head. He stood there looking at me and I delivered 2 more friendly blows to let him know I was boss. I read a lot about this on BYC so I started employing a couple some tactics.

1- I fed the hens from my hand and when he came up to eat I pushed him away. He ran back and forth in the coop making weird noises. Tried eating with the girls a few times but I just pushed him away. When I left I threw some scratch out so they could all eat together but I left the area.

2- I let them all out of the coop and hung out with them for awhile. I would intentionally walk towards him and he would back away. I did this several times.

3- When he tried to mate a hen in front of me I smacked him off with a towel. This has caused the whole flock to fear a towel though.

4- So far he stays far away from me when he sees me coming and I make sure to walk in the run while he is out. He runs under the coop.

5- Today I let them out for awhile and hung out. He is constantly nervous and actually appeared to be trying to get the girls back in the coop by calling them. A few of them preferred to stay outside with me and eat worms. He would not come out to get them but he kept calling. It looked like a jealous boyfriend.

I know he will come at me again and this is probably short lived but I wanted to pass along some of my successes so far.

 

[Nursedanni]

We ended up with 8/15 roosters our first batch (we are about to have a LOT of soup) and I found that just swinging your leg at them is aggressive enough that they back down. I've never had to actually touch them and all 8 have left me alone since day 3 in the run.

 

[rIrs roost]

Out of three roos I only had to hit one. And he never fully straightend out. The other two were fine. The rir that I have now Kinda half heartily jump up and acted like he was going to do something for the first time two days ago. I laughed because he didn't even try to hit me. But I still marched straight after him and he run as fast as he could away from me. Altough I think he was still a little upset that I pick him up and washed his feet making sure that he didn't have bumble foot the day before. He's really a big baby so far. He's eight months old. As long as he stays a big baby he can stay.

 

[blits0927]

I know I am a few months late here..

Better late than never! lol . I'll be sure to keep your advice in mind and pass it along to my boyfriend. As I think he needs it more than me. To this day the General remains my little red shadow when I'm out and about in the yard. I've even tried pushing his buttons a few times by getting in to his personal space, so to speak. Trying to set him up to be aggressive toward me, to set up a teaching moment for him. But he won't have it. He just runs away and then keeps his distance for the rest of the day. And then I sort of feel bad because he looks like he wants to come close and hang out like he normally does, but is afraid to. Once I thought he was coming at me so I kept walking and didn't change my body language. I figured, ok this it, we're going to have a come to Jesus meeting. But that wasn't the case. He was just trying to catch up. As he got closer to me, he veered over to my side and continued on walking up to the house with me. He continues to be a little gentleman when he visits the neighbors, too. Since he's only acted aggressively toward my boyfriend, I've put the teaching task on him. So far they've only ever had 1 other incident where the General tried to get aggressive with him. So fingers crossed, they may be able to at least reach an understanding.