Rooster - violent with my hens!

[Ridgerunner]

for a couple weeks before filling the incubator?

I'll go through this in a way that I hope makes it easy to remember. Hopefully this will help you with your planning.

It takes about 25 hours for an egg to make its way through the hen's internal egg making factory. That egg can only be fertilized during the first few minutes of that journey. That means if a mating takes place on a Thursday, Thursday's egg is not fertile from that mating. Friday's egg might or might not be, depending in timing. Don't count on it. Saturday's egg will be.

The last part of the mating act after the rooster jumps off is that the hen stands up, fluffs up, and shakes. This fluffy shake gets the sperm in a container near where fertilization takes place. That sperm can remain viable in there anywhere from 9 days to over three weeks. A Poultry Science professor that specialized in poultry reproduction said that sperm acts on a last in - first out basis. The last rooster to mate with the hen will probably be the one to fertilize the egg. If you wait two weeks the odds are really good that he will be the father. If you wait three weeks it's pretty darn sure. Four weeks and it's pretty much a slam dunk. I don't know how important it is that he be the father, how long you keep them away from the other rooster before you collect hatching eggs is up to you.

 

[Folly's place]

I have multiple cockerels and adult cock birds, and expect that they will all get along well enough, not be human aggressive, and cause no injuries or undo stress to the hens and pullets. I watch, and remove any who can't fit in, because that's my plan here. Right now the flock is split into breeding groups, but with hardware cloth separating them, so it's very unlikely that there will be rooster battles when they can again range together.
When there's a problem cockerel, or cockerels, it's a choice, either separation on the farm, or moving someone on elsewhere.
Mary