Show Off Your Games!

[Regular Guy]

As I have said before and I will say again. It is an inherent instinct in all kinds of animals to establish dominance in a herd or flock. This instinct usually takes the form of brutal combat between males of the that kind. This is true of all breeds of chickens, not just games. Take any rooster of any breed, isolate it with it's own hens for a while or take it to a new farm and there will be immediate violent combat between that rooster and any other rooster it comes in contact with. This is totally natural and completely necessary as a mechanism of survival, if the birds were in a wild existence. There is nothing evil about this natural instinct. What is evil, is when man tries to manipulate this natural instinct into something destructive for his own profit, pride or personal glory. But the evil occurs only on the part of man, for in order for one to create evil, one must be able to comprehend what is right and wrong. Humans have all kinds of natural but evil desires that we must must resist everyday because we know they are wrong. But we often try to excuse our behavior by saying, "Well, it's only natural". If this were a valid argument, then it should be okay to go rob a bank, because it is a natural desire to want to be rich, or to punch that guys lights out that cut you off in traffic. But no, since we as humans have the ability to comprehend the difference between right and wrong, and also the ability to choose whether to follow or resist our negative natural desires, then we cannot justify our actions based on the argument of "Natural Instinct or Desire".

I agree with this. I'm still learning how to use the 'quote' and 'reply' functions on this site. I started out trying to help Rocky understand what to expect from games since he's new to them. I'm guilty of often trying to condense a lifetime of 'understanding' into a few paragraphs and when you are in a group of folks at ALL different levels of experience, I think it's inevevitable that you are going to have some folks scratghing their heads and thinking, 'that sounds kina contradictory', and that's to be expected too. Let me just try to clarify a couple of comments.

"A properly bred game" - What I meant was, as long as you don't have the 'odd bird' or birds that someone perpetuated from a 'man fighter', then you don't have to worry about your gamecock indescriminantly attacking cats, children etc. True, they may show aggression toward a dog for example, but that just goes back to understanding what, why, what's the circimstance and does the chicken see your dog as 'spot' the way you do, or as a wolf or fox.

"They are just chickens. They do what chickens do" - Reading over my post, particularly the proceeding paragraph, I can see where this could be seen as me agreeing with the court ruling. What I meant should have been properly directed to those with little to no experience with games. I meant to say that as long as you take proper precautions, be it tie cords or pens with solid walls or keeping only a single cock etc., to keep your gamecock seperate from others, then they behave like any other chicken and 'do what chickens do, meaning eat, poop, scratch in the dirt, top hens, keep a watchful eye for preditors and chase off dogs lol.

As a young man I spent a lot of time and effort 'tilting windmills' so to speak and you might have guessed that. Old habbits die hard. As i grow older I'm finding it easier and much more relaxing to concern myself about litterally, what going on in 'my own backyard', especially since much of society seems to have gone completely insane. After over twenty years of my wife's influence I have become increasingly guilty of humanizing our dogs, but I WILL NOT humanize my chickens lol. I enjoy them very much, so I guess you could say they are my 'pets'. I prefer to see my pets healthy and happy 'in my backyard'. And you are 100% right when you say, to paraphrase, humans cause the problems, not the animals. Be it a chicken or a dog or whatever...the vast majority of the time it is human error/ignorace involved whenever there is a problem with animals, excluding the 'rare bird'.

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

Jungle good points, I agree humans often manipulate animals or use a little knowledge incorrectly and that is when we cross the proverbial line.


But one thing I have noticed about humans (and in no way am I excusing poor human behavior as 100% instinct because we do have the ability to control our behaviors including strong drives) is most are in complete denial that they have instincts or how powerful of a drive they may have or even what reactions are instinctive, and that is dangerous as denial of drives & instincts means you will not recognize when you are about to go down Chimp behavior road blindly. Using knowledge of instinct to justify behavior rather than correct ones' behaviors or better understand ones' reactions and thus control them better is a misuse of knowledge in my opinion.

 

[Regular Guy]

Here are a few pictures of my chickens and pens. The pens looked better 20 years ago. I've torn a few down and I need to haul off some junk to build new pens soon. These are my layers in this temporary pen while I decide If I want to sell them or keep them. It's Partridge Rocks, Barred Rocks and an Easter Egger hen. There's a few more that didn't get in the pic.



This is where I usually keep the laying hens. I have a few Sid Taylor hens in here now to collect eggs for the incubator. I had put them in with the laying hens, but i noticed they were pecking at the games and not letting them into the laying boxes so I moved them to the pen pictured above. I always keep brown or blue colored egg layers so if I need to put games in there, for example like I did with the Sid Taylor hens, there is no chance of getting the eggs mixed up. Sometimes I might put a cock in there too, we don't mind eating 'farm eggs'. It was abnormally cold here the last couple of nights, 8 degrees Thursday night and 5 degrees last night. That's whole corn and a few other grains on the ground. When they grind up the whole corn it produces heat and helps keep them warm. They also have oyster shell free choice to help grind. I only feed them whole corn when we're expecting really cold weather.



The hens were a little camera shy. They are behind the laying condo, hehe. As I said before these pens are about 20 years old. Hopefully within the next couple of months I'll be posting pics of some really nice ones to be proud of. These may not be picture perfect, but they are very functional and the chickens have plenty of room to scratch, eat bugs, stretch their wings and 'fly' around the pen. I had the feeders hanging, but the twine rotted and I still haven't gotten around to hanging them back up yet.

 

[jldward]

I've been on BYC for a few months & I just watch & read this thread because I take care of my boyfriend's games along with my layers & the rest of our zoo.

I haven't read all conversation on here about chicken behavior, & I may be off course a little because I don't know what all has been said, but still have a couple cents worth I'd like to offer.

Occasionally my boyfriend may end up with a man fighter, but as in the case now, the only one out there identified (mildly) as such never bothers me. In fact I was in & out of there a lot before finding out he (the cock) occasionally gave my bf trouble. I actually got rid of a Buff Orp roo & a Welsummer roo because they were many times worse than any games on the yard, as far as I know, as far as fighting the hand that feeds them. The Welsummer made my calves, ankles & shins look like pin cushions. I even went on the offensive & he still got hits in, & particularly liked to attack when I wasn't looking or was walking away. Not proud to say I about knocked him loopy with a plastic feed scoop in self-defense. Ok, off topic, sorry. Point being chickens don't have to be game to be "mean". I'll let my grandson around any chickens on our place, now that those two are gone.

I don't approve of fighting at all, but I do agree, it's what chickens do naturally, to a degree. It is not natural to pen them together & force it, but the behavior is there. Stags can be raised together, separated for a while & when exposed to each other, & the fight is on, when of age. We've had chicks sparring very young. BUT my layers, if let out for a while, sometimes will clash a little for a brief time. It's natural.

Yes, chickens do " what they do". My whole point here is manfighter, mean & game are not exclusively synonymous.

I enjoy reading & seeing the pics of your different stock & set ups.

 

[Regular Guy]

Jldward, you are right about that. I had two Jersey Giant cockbirds one weekend, always wanted JG's. They both were the attack from behind kind too. Google "how to cook an old rooster". I kept chickens as a kid, lost interest in my twenties and I bought those at an auction when I first got back into keeping chickens. I must have been very lucky as I don't ever recall having any other aggresive ones and I've had quite a few from hatcheries too. I forget sometimes that not everyone's experiences are like mine.

 

[Jungleexplorer]

I have raised chickens for over 30 years in multiple countries. I have never seen a man fighter except in the US. Here it is very common. The question is, why? I cannot give you any scientific data as to why, but my personal suspicion is that it is due to the intensive breed oriented selective breeding that goes on here. In other countries where I have lived all chickens are just chickens. They are also all totally free range, almost feral. They live and breed almost completely without any help or direction of man. I have owned literally thousands of birds over my years in central and south America and never once had a rooster attack me or anyone else (or knew anyone else that did either). A mother hen, yes! But never a rooster.

Most animals, by their nature, fear man. The fact that there are so many accounts of rooster attacking humans in this country is indicative of something being not totally right. The reasons why are hard to say, but the facts are that I have never seen it where there is no selective breeding involved, might point to that be at least one of the factors of causation.

 

[Regular Guy]

You are right, but to shed more light on the subject it is not intensive breeding alone, rather intensive poor breeding practices. That's why I say that a properly bred game animal is the best you can get when it comes to amicable disspositions with humans (and this is why once again you have to use common sense applied to knowledge to see through the media senationalized stories for the purpose of selling newspapers or gaining viewers):

I am going to use two examples and if you apply common sense to these examples you will not question the proceeding paragraph I promise.

Dogs: Dogs are not 'put into a pit' they are on the ground with handlers hovering over them throught the event with no worry of being attacked by what the media would say is a dangerous and UNPREDICTALBE animal - the opposite of the truth - if they were dangerous and unpredictable then the 'sport' would be self eliminating as all of the handlers would be dead. Common sense follows knowledge. The 'odd ones' were put down for what should be obvious reasons. The animals are bred for gameness and fantastic disspositions with humans irregardless of looks, however form follows function. Interesting trivia: Do you remember Petey (Spelled Pete), the lovable 'mutt' from the old black and white "Little Rascals; Our Gang" series? Remember how smart he was and how all the kids played with him and even rode on his back? (please don't let your kids to that, lol). The original 'PETE the Pup' was also known as "Lucenay's Peter" - a game bred 'Colby strain' American Pit Bull Terrier. In total, six different dogs played the role of pete, all Colby game bred dogs, but you will have to search way back to find the info because after the media attack campaign that started in the 70's (Dang, this sells as good as sex!!) everyone wanted to distance themselves from the breed. I have a full VHS tape about Pete I bought a couple of years ago, all about Pete and it never mentions his breed as is often the case when the 'news' is positive.

Show Dogs: Bred for looks. If you want a spotted dog and you have one that is deaf and attacks children but he has the best darn spots on him you've seen in years then you're going to breed him or her.

Chickens:

Game Chickens: Not bred for looks. Form follows function. Same thing as dogs, not put in a pit, hands on hanldlers. We've heard the testimonies of what cocks can do with naked spurs, now when you start strapping steel on them, you will want to know that that steel is not directed at you so you are far less likely to breed from one or even allow him to live.

Hatcheries: When the manager of a restaurant is abscent, quality suffers. Hatcheries are all about numbers.

Show Chickens: Not to offend, but what is more likely to happen. You have a fine specimen of a 'breed', but dissposition is 'not so good' to 'terrible'.

As you said, when 'families' of chickens are kept without such emphasis on looks alone the temptation to breed from a 'man fighter' is less important than excersizing common sense. This is not to say that all show chickens are of poor quality when it comes to disspostions as some are beautiful examples of fine breeding, but it depends on the knowledge and integrity of the breeder and the breeders before him and after.

One breeding program breeds against 'man fighters' and has for thousands of years. The other often rewards the breeder for breeding poor quality animals when it comes to their disspositions.

 

[jldward]

Maybe this doesn't apply, but I believe it can...the mantra associated with the Pit Bulls (I am a Pit lover/supporter as a pet, abhore fighting & those associated w/it)....paraphrased, its not the breed, its what people do with it. We honestly got rid of a male Chihuahua after it almost killed a Pit puppy years ago. Any dog can be a fighter/killer, especially if allowed/bred/raised to do so (we don't like/tolerate aggressive).

I realize these games have the instinct in them naturally, very much stronger than, say, average layers, but, certain characteristics can be enhanced/diminished by breeding, directed by, or at the hands of humans. I don't see why anyone would see "manfighter" as a desirable trait in anything. Of course, as I think was mentioned before, those broody or mama hens are a force to be reckoned with. We have some I call Pit Bull game hens because they clamp down & don't want to let go when I'm checking eggs or hatching progress. I think all of those happen to be Greys, too, but I could be mistaken.

 

[Yahya Morse]

One of my bull stags Bump

 

[Rocky64]

One of my bull stags Bump

Nice stag. I have a few questions, first are gamefowl cold hardy, I love in michigan so winters are pretty bad, like -25 degrees for a few weeks. Something else that I would ask is that I've noticed a lot of the pics show stags tied to string with no fence around, and other pics show stags in chain-link fence. My question is do you guys have losses to predators such as fox or mink, it would seem that mink could just walk in and kill all the stags.