Rooster problems

[poultry bro]

Hi everybody I have a problem I own 50 chickens so I am no newbie to chickens but I have 4 flocks of them the biggest being 35 and the lowest being 3 but my flock of 35 is 30 hens and 5 roosters now these 35 birds freerange on about 2 acres and they have access to my other 3 flocks of chickens which have a rooster in each flock so my problem is of the five roosters my dominant rooster is a white leghorn and next in command is a black jersey giant and then a white sultan, mottled houdan, and then a silkie cochin cross so to get to the point will my BJG rooster eventually become more dominant than my white leghorn he also bullies my other roosters not to bad but will he calm down or become more aggressive with age they have all lived together for about 8 months so he is still a cockerel but I hear that game cocks become more aggressive with age so I hope he does not become more aggressive.

 

[bobbi-j]

That is impossible to answer. They are living animals, and there's no telling what they're going to do. What I can tell you is, you will most likely have squabbles (maybe even flat-out fights) between the roosters as they establish and try to re-establish pecking order. At least that's been my experience. They'll get it figured out, get along for a while, and then one of the lower ones will challenge the dominant one. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Either way, the cycle will begin again eventually.

 

[centrarchid]

Clarify what is written above.

 

[poultry bro]

That's exactly the answer I was looking for and yes they do squabble already its always my BJG that attacks the other 3 roosters and I the other 3 are way to afraid of his size to ever think about fighting him also sorry about my what I wrote I am a bit of a scatter brain. I also like to explain the whole story I am just so proud of my flock.

 

[poultry bro]

And to clarify my problem is will the BJG become more dominant than my white leghorn from what I can see is that if he becomes the flock master he will bully all the other roosters and be to violent with the hens and then he will either be separated or be slaughtered next year.

 

[bobbi-j]

And to clarify my problem is will the BJG become more dominant than my white leghorn from what I can see is that if he becomes the flock master he will bully all the other roosters and be to violent with the hens and then he will either be separated or be slaughtered next year.

The only way to know if that will happen is to let it play out. It's impossible to guess how it will turn out.

 

[poultry bro]

Your right and should he become to aggressive he will be moved.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

Bullying other roosters is the #1 job description for becoming a rooster.

If all roosters are more or less equal in age, size, physical ability, and libido then they may coexist.

Roosters do not become more aggressive as they age, they become more mature.

Maturity in male animals usually results in the male in question becoming dominant, and dominance usually results in that animal assembling a harem or else bossing a large territory in order to mate with as many females as is possible.

The only way that a rooster can accomplish this feat is to suppress his competition. To a large extent roosters crow to accomplish this but they also must back up their verbal threats with displays and physical daring do.

With enough ground to roam and a sufficient number of hens I have seen real rooting tooting gamecocks free range together but each rooster had his own distinct area or walk to boss. Also each walk had its own physical features to rally around, like a old house place, the new home place, the hog pen, a mule stable, an apiary, the cow shed, the orchard, and the dog pen to call home and each walk or run also had its own water and feed resources and acceptable roosting areas. Because there were no fences or pens of any kind, the hens did trade from walk to walk and often a rooster would try to herd a wayward hen back to the roosters' home area but if he reached the boundary of his Kingdom he usually pulled up. I am unsure if the rooster was loath to leave his harem behind in order to pursue one unfaithful hen, but that is what it looked like. Maybe the roosters realized that 100 or more hens in the hand was worth more than one fickle hen escaping to his neighbor's walk.

This farm covered over 500 acres and the features were scattered over about 40-50 acres of it.

In my long years with chickens I have never seen a real dominant rooster be violent, at least as chickens score violence with a hen. In my considerable experience hens look for the rooster and voluntary submit to him. They do this by squatting in his presence and remaining squatted until the courting ritual is finished and mating is accomplished. All the squawking and flying feathers is because the hen is adverse to being mated by (to her) an inferior or low ranking rooster.

Roosters are jealous and one problem you may face is the dominant rooster pulling or knocking his competition off the hens' back every time the non-dominant rooster tries to mate. This is one way that you can end up with infertile eggs even though you have sufficient roosters. The dominant bird is too busy policing his run to mate and the non dominant roosters never completes the act. Too many roosters like too many cooks spoil the soup. Commercial hatching egg operations don't experience this problem because despite all the new chicken keepers opinions about the innate aggression of commercial hatchery birds, the opposite is in fact the truth.

That said I have seen non-game roosters form partnerships with a near dominant bird and with the dominant rooster standing aside to allow the runner up rooster to tread a hen once the dominant bird had finished. I think that this is not a conscious strategy but that it represents a slow change or transfer of dominance.

 

[poultry bro]

Well one odd thing I notice about my white leghorn Foghorn is that he lets other roosters mate in front of him and in the past I see the dominant rooster attack to let the subordinate know his place in the flock. Also the reason I said that game cocks become more aggressive with age was because I read in a poultry magazine that malay, shamo, and aseel may fight at birth or as much as 18 months and I am surprised that my BJG is not the most dominant because in P Allen Smiths video on farm raised he said that the leghorn would have no chance in a fight with a black jersey giant. I also notice that my sultan and houdan roosters have created that bond you described I like to call it a brotherhood they seem to know they can count on each other.

 

[poultry bro]

By the way you have been answering a lot of my questions lately you just replied to my sheep vs goats thread.