My hens go broody all the time but I don't allow them to hatch and raise their own, so can't speak to how well they do with brooding. Tried with one in the past when she was a year old - had a negative result so have not given her or any of the others a chance since then. Currently can't afford to take the risk of allowing them to brood since I need to increase the numbers of my foundation breeding flock and need to be able to have enough good birds on the ground that losing a hatch would not be a problem for our breeding program.
You know, there are so many variables that go into a chicken's behavior that those descriptions of "friendly", "docile", "flighty" don't really do a lot for me when using the term for a general breed description. Individual flocks are different as are individual chickens. And people's ideas of what those terms mean are so different. Chickens can be trained through husbandry to exhibit behaviors which are termed "friendly", "docile", "flighty", "aggressive" etc all depending on how they are managed. Some people want a "docile" chicken that is just easy to catch when needed. Other people want that "docile" to mean calm without engaging in pecking order behavior. And still others want a chicken that wears a diaper and comes in the house to watch tv. So it's all about perspective and flock management as to what those terms describe as well as individual chicken personalities.
So you know where I'm coming from - we do "serious" breeding. We want males that are good breeders, ones that don't allow a hen to throw them off their backs and cause poor fertility. We want males that are protective of their hens. Basically we want males to get a rooster's job done. So that means the cocks we keep for breeding are likely to have more dominant personalities than a backyard flock where it's ok to have males that aren't "vigorous" because breeding isn't something done with specific goals in mind. Plus they have to meet a whole lot of other criteria that has nothing to do with behavior - we ask a lot of our chickens
If another male is unwilling to take a subordinate role and stay in his place, the dominant male is not going to tolerate that other rooster. being around - true with pretty much all animals. We do have a few exceptions to males not living with each other, but their management is different than the males actively used for mating, and there are dominant and subordinate cocks in those pens. But most of our cocks refuse to take a subordinate role and for our purposes - that's a good thing. It does mean we have to have a bunch more housing to keep single males in, but we do what we have to as part of our breeding goals.
Now we did butcher some physically excellent specimens that were just too rough on hens. There was a clear difference between the males that were "good roosters getting the job done" and the males that tried to beat up and rape every hen they saw and did it constantly. That was something we didn't want to risk perpetuating by breeding those males. We managed to keep one male out of that group who was not so rough and that cock is a good rooster - not too rough with the ladies and also is respectful of people, getting out of the way to let me work in the pen while still being interested in what I'm doing so he can protect his hens or call them over if I've got treats. So I know that not every chicken with the same/similar genetics is ALWAYS destined to turn out having a lousy attitude even if others related to them do.
With young males, we separate by gender before the males get any idea of what sex is. This helps us be able to keep cockerels together in a grow out pen longer without hassling as much over a female. It also keeps the stress levels lower so that both the males and females don't have growth stunted because the cockerels are chasing pullets, and each other all the time, and running off any weight they put on because the males are horny.
So our situation is probably a bit different than most people's flock management.
Bored now?
