we wound up with 4 roosters and 11 hens. 2 hens died young and 1 roo got named "Dinner" at 6 weeks because he was such an awful bully I started weighing him every week. I still had him months later when everybody became sexually mature and my friend wanted a roo. The one barred rock roo was my pet so he was off limits, but the 3 black australorps (Dinner and the 2 that followed him like he was a gang leader) she could have her choice of. she took one of Dinner's errand boys, and a weird thing happened: his other flunky became Godfather and Dinner just became pitiful! he hides all the time, hardly mates, and I swear his comb and wattles have shrunk, whereas the new bully seems to be 3x worse than Dinner ever was, and my pet Roo just hangs with the girls or by himself. watching chicken sex is not for the fainthearted, but the more they do it, the better they get, and now the girls seem to beg for it, and get upset if I keep the boys (well, at least pet Roofus) away. more than one roo around and it gets ugly because they seem to want to gang-bang (pardon my language). as to what may happen when you are down to one roo, well the gangmember chicken who was always following Dinner, getting into trouble, bullying everybody, now that he is lone rooster to his own harem has turned into an awesome roo. he keeps the older girls from picking on the little ones, breaks up fights, tells them where food is, warns them of trouble, just does everything a good roo should do. even better, he would not let me pick him up, but from the moment she arrived to choose him, he has been tame for his new owner. getting away from the competition worked wonders for a non-dominant roo and really brought out the best in him.
now I just have to get rid of my other two bullies...
now I just have to get rid of my other two bullies...
