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- #41
mgharris30
Songster
As far as the ordinance goes, there is one for roaming dogs. But, the rooster one gets enforced and the dog one doesn’t. I found a friend who wants to add a roo to her flock. I’m passing him on today.All good suggestions so far! I would just add that if the bully has been separated for a few days already you can probably try adding him back. It's likely that while he's been isolated, the pecking order has likely changed and when he is reintroduced, he'll be demoted to the bottom, and have to learn to be more polite.
Also, early differences in growth speed can mean a lot with chicks. I have a bunch of 10-day-olds, all from my own relatively similarly-sized chickens, and I swear the biggest ones are twice the size of the smallest ones. But that may even out some as they grow. Granted, the cockerels will stay bigger and the silkies will stay smaller, but the size differences may become a little less extreme as they age.
If he continues to hurt the other ones, you could separate him again and then reintroduce him after you've made some changes to expand the run. Most aggressive chickens will be less so if they have more space. A quick and dirty solution that might work for the present would be getting some chicken wire fencing and some posts and setting it up just outside the door of the run. It would be roofless so you'd still have to close the door to the run at night, but it would give them extra space and you could hang out with them in there. That might give you a little wiggle room until you can get around to making a more permanent addition to the run.
In case you do end up getting more chickens later, there are a few breeds that can be autosexed at birth, so that you can buy chicks and not have to worry about half of them being roos. You could also do pullets - that's what I did when I was starting out - but they are a lot more expensive.
Also, I just have to say, your city is ok with roaming dogs but has an ordinance against roosters? Yet another example of people's priorities being completely backwards.