ROOSTERS! Tell me its a phase please!

[tay26]

oh my goodness im glad you asked about this! I have an orpington rooster that is doing the exact same thing right now. Hes about 15 weeks and he chases hens around till he gets hold of their heads/necks. They squak and fight him till they can rip themselves away! He wont even stop when i go in and try to pull him away. Im not sure if this is just because he is ready to mate and the hens arent or what but its brutal.
Now i see him chasing my friendly/calm roo around and grabbing at his head too!

 

[kcfuerst]

I think a rather nice chicken dinner is in order here.

 

[gritsar]

Quote:
Again, running around, trying to grab the pullets and irritating the heck outta them like a bunch of teenage boys is one thing. Doing actual harm by ripping flesh is a whole 'nother thing.
If there's no blood being drawn, he's just being a teenager. Chicken mating is not pretty. The boys will all have you reading up on chicken recipes for awhile. Once the pullets mature enough to accept mating it's all over quickly (5 seconds) and with very little fuss. You just have to wait them out.

 

[briana1975]

Our silkie roo chases the hens, and grabs them by the tail or neck, but they are bigger then him, Buff Orps. He likes his ladies large. But he is not aggresive. Now we also have a RIR roo that is nasty. He all out is attacking our young turkeys. He grabs them by the neck then brings his feet up to their necks too. He is on his second week in chicken time out. His last chance is tomorrow. If he can't stop attacking things he will be dinner by the end of the week.

 

[Tam'ra of Rainbow Vortex]

Well, in answer to what will happen when I hatch more roosters, my reply is, they will join the first ten in the freezer. And we are one rooster down already; something nabbed my silkie.
Thanks for all the replies... I just need to figure out if the barred rock AND the silver laced are going to be eaten... we never intended to keep 'Nugget' and although he is being nicer to us, he isn't much nicer to the hens than Gengis. Maybe HE is having a rooster phase, but I want to know for sure what's going on and what I intend to do about it before we put anyone in the freezer. I don't enjoy the process and I don't want to go through it twice if I can get it over with in one go.

 

[Judy]

The grabbing the neck is part of mating, and does not seem so violent after the pullets start accepting being mated, and stop tearing themselves away from the neck grab. In my bunch, the roos were ready before the pullets were. That said, my coop calmed down tremendously when I cut the roos back to two for 20 pullets. Before the last freezer camp, the pullets tended to stay on the roosts to avoid the mating. So nice to see them out and about now. We waited a bit too long, too.

The whole problem is that you aren't really going to know how a roo will be as an adult before he is a bit tough for the freezer, so you have to take your chances, IME. Chicken stock is good, too, though, and coq au vin is supposed to be done with an older roo.

 

[Judy]

Being nice to you is not necessarily a sign of a good rooster; they can see this as a sign they are dominant over you, and obviously can then get difficult to handle.

I went first by size, as I wanted good, fast growing stock, but I was lucky, the 3 biggest were also pretty decent fellows. Then I went more by how rough they were on the pullets than how they treated me, although the only one who really attacked me was a runt, so that was easy. The debatable one was the one who never bothered me but really made the hens scream, much worse than the others. He was the prettiest, but went to the freezer anyway, because of the screaming. I had a SLW pullet who went to the freezer in the first batch because she was so mean to the others. I was amazed to find she was not a roo, but did not care, as I would not have wanted her around, anyway.

Only thing about going through it twice is, you learn so much from the first round that it goes MUCH faster after that. Took us 3 rounds to get it done, but it should have been two.

If you're going to eat your extra roos, you have to get more or less used to it, anyway. Just read another article about battery chickens, and remember why you're doing this.

Hope that helps some.

 

[Sequin]

This is my first year having a rooster around. I was sooo worried about all the screaming my girls were doing. The rooster seemed so mean to them all the time. I kept eyeing him and telling him there was space enough for him in the freezer should he need a bit of cooling his jets. Now that the girls are in a more receptive mood, there is really no squawking and so much less noise. Not only that, but he helps me watch for predators and can alert all the girls much better/quicker than I can. So, it may take a little bit for the noise and irritation to subside. Too, he is not aggressive toward people. Of course, he is not out alone when I am not home - so I don't know how he is with complete strangers. But whenever I am around he doesn't bother visitors. He is a bit afraid of me, and I like that. He trusts me to come into the coop and help keep the girls safe, but he gives me a respectable distance. I'm good with that.


Forgot to mention, that for a while I would control things when he was out with his girls in the yard. If he got too intent on a girl I would 'guard' her and keep him away from her. Even if it meant pushing him off her with my foot. In this sense, I think he came to understand in some way that they are my girls too and I will protect them. Now we protect the girls together.

 

[tigerlilly2588]

Awww! That was a cute story Sequin! I def vote putting Genius on the dinner menu and changing Cabobs name to Mr. Lucky Britches