Hi all,
I had some questions about the roosters behavior in my flock. Some backstory:
We have four hens that are our original flock from 2017. Last year we got 12 more hens, and 7 roosters. The flocks were combined, and everything was fine for a while.
The roosters started getting aggressive toward the original flock, and I didn't actually want 7 roosters. So we had 4 pot pies, and are left with our current situation:
3 hens from the original flock from 2017
12 hens from the new flock from 2020
3 roosters from the new flock from 2020
For a while they still weren't integrating well. The roosters were still targeting the original flock. I'm not sure if this is because they're more sexually mature than the younger hens or what, but they seemed to target them for breeding most of all. This went on a for a while and the original flock would spend a lot of their time hiding in the coop, and trying to sneak outside for food and water.
After a while I tried to break this behavior. The hens weren't laying eggs at the time, so I closed up the top of the coop where the nest boxes are. This is where the original flock was hiding, and the roosters don't like to go up there that often. So I closed the nest box door in hopes of trying to "force" integrate the two flocks. So, now everyone had to sleep together and live in the same quarters.
It worked, too... For a while. The flocks were more integrated, and were hanging out together more. The roosters still seemed to prefer breeding with the original hens, but they did still breed with the younger hens too. But the original flock hens would just take the breeding now, they didn't run away... They kind of "fell in line".
Then, I put in an automatic chicken door off of Amazon to open in the morning and close as night. This seemed great... Except the chicken door I purchased ended up being a complete piece of junk (avoid the Run-Chicken brand on Amazon) and the door just started randomly opening and closing during the day (this was the first week) and caused an issue. So I went out to fix the door (we have a camera on the pasture, so we knew it had closed).
Two hens got locked in the coop because the automatic door closed and didn't reopen. It was a hen from the original flock, and a hen from the new flock. I heard a bit of commotion in the coop when I got there, but didn't think much of it. I fixed up the door and then let them out. At that point, I noticed the hen from the new flock had a bloody head and comb. The old hen had attacked her, presumably because they were scared and trapped in the dark coop (side note: I need to add a window).
Anyway. That leads us to now. The hen from the original flock that attacked the hen from the new flock is now being aggressively targeted by the roosters. She's pretty much confined to the coop now during the day, and I have to put food and water in there for her. If she comes out of the coop to get food and water, the roosters immediately notice her and sprint over and peck at her. I believe they're breeding, too, but they're also just pecking at her. Her feathers look mostly fine still, so they haven't done a ton of damage yet but she's still not able to get out of the coop during the day unless they (uncommonly) don't notice her.
I realize we probably have too many roosters for the amount of hens we have as well. There's a couple reasons for that. We have frequent hawk attacks, and the roosters are helping us by alerting with their emergency sound and just keeping an eye out for threats. We have a camera out there that we keep up on the TV all day so we can hear them alerting and respond to the threats as necessary. Further, we're also getting 15 more day old hens in April that will join the flock and even out the rooster to hen ratio.
So I'm looking for some advice here. What can I do to help my hen that's being targeted? Is this normal behavior? Will it eventually just sort itself out? I'd like to avoid culling more roosters, but it's not completely out of the question. The three roosters have names now, so that makes it a little harder.
I had some questions about the roosters behavior in my flock. Some backstory:
We have four hens that are our original flock from 2017. Last year we got 12 more hens, and 7 roosters. The flocks were combined, and everything was fine for a while.
The roosters started getting aggressive toward the original flock, and I didn't actually want 7 roosters. So we had 4 pot pies, and are left with our current situation:
3 hens from the original flock from 2017
12 hens from the new flock from 2020
3 roosters from the new flock from 2020
For a while they still weren't integrating well. The roosters were still targeting the original flock. I'm not sure if this is because they're more sexually mature than the younger hens or what, but they seemed to target them for breeding most of all. This went on a for a while and the original flock would spend a lot of their time hiding in the coop, and trying to sneak outside for food and water.
After a while I tried to break this behavior. The hens weren't laying eggs at the time, so I closed up the top of the coop where the nest boxes are. This is where the original flock was hiding, and the roosters don't like to go up there that often. So I closed the nest box door in hopes of trying to "force" integrate the two flocks. So, now everyone had to sleep together and live in the same quarters.
It worked, too... For a while. The flocks were more integrated, and were hanging out together more. The roosters still seemed to prefer breeding with the original hens, but they did still breed with the younger hens too. But the original flock hens would just take the breeding now, they didn't run away... They kind of "fell in line".
Then, I put in an automatic chicken door off of Amazon to open in the morning and close as night. This seemed great... Except the chicken door I purchased ended up being a complete piece of junk (avoid the Run-Chicken brand on Amazon) and the door just started randomly opening and closing during the day (this was the first week) and caused an issue. So I went out to fix the door (we have a camera on the pasture, so we knew it had closed).
Two hens got locked in the coop because the automatic door closed and didn't reopen. It was a hen from the original flock, and a hen from the new flock. I heard a bit of commotion in the coop when I got there, but didn't think much of it. I fixed up the door and then let them out. At that point, I noticed the hen from the new flock had a bloody head and comb. The old hen had attacked her, presumably because they were scared and trapped in the dark coop (side note: I need to add a window).
Anyway. That leads us to now. The hen from the original flock that attacked the hen from the new flock is now being aggressively targeted by the roosters. She's pretty much confined to the coop now during the day, and I have to put food and water in there for her. If she comes out of the coop to get food and water, the roosters immediately notice her and sprint over and peck at her. I believe they're breeding, too, but they're also just pecking at her. Her feathers look mostly fine still, so they haven't done a ton of damage yet but she's still not able to get out of the coop during the day unless they (uncommonly) don't notice her.
I realize we probably have too many roosters for the amount of hens we have as well. There's a couple reasons for that. We have frequent hawk attacks, and the roosters are helping us by alerting with their emergency sound and just keeping an eye out for threats. We have a camera out there that we keep up on the TV all day so we can hear them alerting and respond to the threats as necessary. Further, we're also getting 15 more day old hens in April that will join the flock and even out the rooster to hen ratio.
So I'm looking for some advice here. What can I do to help my hen that's being targeted? Is this normal behavior? Will it eventually just sort itself out? I'd like to avoid culling more roosters, but it's not completely out of the question. The three roosters have names now, so that makes it a little harder.
