Royal Palm tom-need advice!

[WeatheredWings]

As you can see in this pic, Strutter, our RP tom is very tame and loves being around humans! He has taken especially to my 5 yr. old, but has just recently started getting aggressive with my 7 yr. old. He seems to have claimed my 5 yr old as "his". We had got a hen at the same time as this tom, but unfortunately was either stolen or taken by a predator in the middle of the day, but not a single feather found. Since then, rather than roaming the yard with the chickens, he comes up on our deck,struts and poops. We got a new 1yr.old hen a week ago and they get along great in the pen, but as soon as I let him out, he ignores her and goes straight to wherever my son is. I could reroute our coop so that the chickens could still free range and still get into their boxes and keep him penned up all the time. Anyone have any other ideas on how to get him to start hanging out with his hen and to graze with her, how to break his claim over my son and how to keep him from sparring at my daughter??? He is well behaved with the rest of my family. Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

[retlaw]

Keep him penned for a while and try to have your son stay away from him for awhile.
And never let him feed him.
It to bad because your son looks like he enjoys it.

 

[WeatheredWings]

I modified the pen & coop area last night to accommodate the chickens, while keeping him penned up. The hard part, which in retrospect may be part of the problem, will be to keep my son from feeding him. It is quite a sight to look outside and see a little boy digging for worms in the lawn(another spring project-fix lawn) and being surrounded by chickens and a turkey waiting for a treat! He loves gathering eggs too, so I will need to find him some new helpful chores! Thanks for the response!

 

[retlaw]

Worms are a carriers of protozoan parasite which causes blackhead.

 

[WeatheredWings]

He said that the turkey does not eat the worms, but the chickens do. I will have to read up about that. Do you know if grubs are bad too? I know he digs them up too.

 

[retlaw]

Grubs are never brought up when talking about blackhead so I am guessing they are fine.

Make great fishing bait also.

 

[WeatheredWings]

I did some reading about blackhead and didn't come across anything either about grubs. However, I think I will have him save the worms and grubs for fishing and not feed anything like that to any of the birds to help prevent the turkeys from getting it from the chickens, sounds like they aren't as affected by blackhead but are carriers through their droppings. Thank you for making me aware of this!