Roosters

[Skylercarr]

I have 2 16 week old golden laced wyandotte roosters that grew up with each other. they are pretty good with each sometimes they pluck 1 or 2 feathers out of the other rooster now and then. But I'm getting another rooster that is 6 months old and the lady I'm getting him from says he's very good with other roosters. So this is my problem I'm not sure how to introduce a rooster to my flock? I've introduced 2 new hens to my flock but that was when they were only 6 weeks old so I'm not sure if they will be very excepting of a rooster. Any ideas would be great thanks!

 

[aart]

They won't be accepting.......why do you need 3 cockerels?

How many birds you have and what kind of housing setup up you have would help get better answers.

 

[Marylanddave]

I had 3 roosters as well.... thanks to some poor sexing from Meyer Hatchery. Just eat two of the roosters. Your hens will thank you

 

[Skylercarr]

Right now we have the hens and roosters in the same coop. But we are building a separate coop for all of the roosters. I have 4 hens and 2 roosters and we are getting two more one a hen and the other a rooster. I don't want to eat them because I need them to start up a small business selling chicks. There's some pictures of my coop.

 

[aart]

That coop is only big enough for about 3-4 chickens.

If you want to raise chicks for sale you only need 1 rooster for about 8-10 hens.

 

[keesmom]

Adding one male to the group likely won't go well.

 

[gruffy]

I raise my own chicks to sell and I found if you need a good place to rehome roosters I take the one's I can't sell to the feed store. They sell roosters off really fast it's a good alternative to eating them

 

[Skylercarr]

Ok and the chicken coop is 4 by 6 and the run is 6 by 12. The coop that we are building specifically for the roosters will be a couple of feet less then are original coop.

 

[Folly's place]

You don't have enough room, and adding another cockrel won't go well. Mary

 

[gruffy]

Well I see she has been warned several times about the multiple roosters the best we can do now is hope they don't rip eachother apart before she learns.
If you plan on breeding multiple roosters you have to put up runs for each rooster where they cannot be with another rooster. They are not like pigeons they don't pair off they have a strict pecking order and roosters are mentally programmed from puberty to fight to the death over their flock and any other rooster in the cage will be targeted. Every small flock only has one rooster for a reason, exeptions are rare. My advice if you do have to pick between your roosters keep the most well behaved bird. Temperament is genetic and a mean rooster doesn't make good offspring.
Also small pens with large numbers of birds will not have good results. Unless you leave the door open and let them free range those birds will be too much for that little space and look more like battery hens and on top of that you have roosters clawing their backs every time they mount. This situation will quickly become animal abuse/neglect.