- May 8, 2007
- 110
- 2
- 139
Well, i hadn't had a chance to come back after posting until my previous topic was closed, but that long post bout the roosters was amazing and I wish I had stumbled across it before I had chickens, as mine are all almost a year old now. But, you live and learn, I guess.
I'd talked to a couple of friends who have chickens, but the general consensus seemed to be get rid of him before he hurts someone. I agree that it seems counterintuitive that he would being so small and fluffy, but lots of small children visit my house, I'd prefer to err on the side of caution.
My son and I worked on convincing both silkies that he's the top roo, and they seem to shy away from him now as they do from Peepers our large breed roo. He's done a little with Peepers as well, to make sure he doesn't overstep his bounds either, with all this testosterone in the air.
My almost 4 year old daughter however is a different story. She is absolutely terrified of them at this point, so based on the advice in the last post I'm going to start doing this:
1. Build a run for the chickens so that if kids visit, I can keep the chickens in it if I'm not going to outside at all times.
2. Work with my daughter and the roosters. First I think we need to just do a lot of holding them, first probably me because although she has held them their entire lives, I think she might be too scared right now to jump right into that. After she's comfortable being around them and sees that they dont' attack her all the time, I'll help her take her place above them in the pecking order much the same way we did with my son. Mostly keeping eye contact, and moving toward them in a threatening manner. And having a broom or stick to trip them if they did come at us. Not harshly to cause harm, just enough to make them stumble. But now I can incorporate the ideas presented in the previous post too and expand our arsenal.
3. Spend more time with the flock. During the winter, we just seemed not to be outside a lot with the chickens, but as each day brings us warmer weather, we're back outside much more often. Hopefully these longer interactions with the girls will help.
These guys are our pets, there are just 10 and they all have names and we know their personalities well. I'm sorry 3 of them turned out to be roos, I was hoping to be luckier. These attacks seemed to have come out of nowhere since they've been sexually active for some time. However, I just learned today from the woman who takes care of them while we're gone that her dogs came and had their way with our flock during our trip. And not 2 weeks before, one of her goldens had retrieved one of our silkie roos (the worst child-abuse offender) and carried him off by his tail. Which is now gone.
All the chickens were fine after this most recent visit, no injuries other than the second silkie has now also lost most of his tail, and the neighbor came back with shock collars on the dogs and make it clear that they are off limits. I understand that free ranging our chicks exposes us to threats like this, and I'm glad that her dogs haven't killed the entire flock outright like I've seen in attack photos on this site. I'm also glad that she took quick action about training the dogs to quit, and she said they won't even run up the path to our house from their driveway.
I'm not sure if these attacks on the silkies triggered the attacks on my kids, but I wonder if it's possible.
If we could just establish alpha male status for all the members of our family, I would consider the problem solved and just keep them in the run if we have visitors to avoid unnecessary risks. In fact, with spring planting season upon us, they were going to be spending lots of time in their soon to be created run anyway.
Thanks to all for the advice previously, I'll let you know what works for us.
I'd talked to a couple of friends who have chickens, but the general consensus seemed to be get rid of him before he hurts someone. I agree that it seems counterintuitive that he would being so small and fluffy, but lots of small children visit my house, I'd prefer to err on the side of caution.
My son and I worked on convincing both silkies that he's the top roo, and they seem to shy away from him now as they do from Peepers our large breed roo. He's done a little with Peepers as well, to make sure he doesn't overstep his bounds either, with all this testosterone in the air.
My almost 4 year old daughter however is a different story. She is absolutely terrified of them at this point, so based on the advice in the last post I'm going to start doing this:
1. Build a run for the chickens so that if kids visit, I can keep the chickens in it if I'm not going to outside at all times.
2. Work with my daughter and the roosters. First I think we need to just do a lot of holding them, first probably me because although she has held them their entire lives, I think she might be too scared right now to jump right into that. After she's comfortable being around them and sees that they dont' attack her all the time, I'll help her take her place above them in the pecking order much the same way we did with my son. Mostly keeping eye contact, and moving toward them in a threatening manner. And having a broom or stick to trip them if they did come at us. Not harshly to cause harm, just enough to make them stumble. But now I can incorporate the ideas presented in the previous post too and expand our arsenal.
3. Spend more time with the flock. During the winter, we just seemed not to be outside a lot with the chickens, but as each day brings us warmer weather, we're back outside much more often. Hopefully these longer interactions with the girls will help.
These guys are our pets, there are just 10 and they all have names and we know their personalities well. I'm sorry 3 of them turned out to be roos, I was hoping to be luckier. These attacks seemed to have come out of nowhere since they've been sexually active for some time. However, I just learned today from the woman who takes care of them while we're gone that her dogs came and had their way with our flock during our trip. And not 2 weeks before, one of her goldens had retrieved one of our silkie roos (the worst child-abuse offender) and carried him off by his tail. Which is now gone.
All the chickens were fine after this most recent visit, no injuries other than the second silkie has now also lost most of his tail, and the neighbor came back with shock collars on the dogs and make it clear that they are off limits. I understand that free ranging our chicks exposes us to threats like this, and I'm glad that her dogs haven't killed the entire flock outright like I've seen in attack photos on this site. I'm also glad that she took quick action about training the dogs to quit, and she said they won't even run up the path to our house from their driveway.
I'm not sure if these attacks on the silkies triggered the attacks on my kids, but I wonder if it's possible.
If we could just establish alpha male status for all the members of our family, I would consider the problem solved and just keep them in the run if we have visitors to avoid unnecessary risks. In fact, with spring planting season upon us, they were going to be spending lots of time in their soon to be created run anyway.
Thanks to all for the advice previously, I'll let you know what works for us.