Too many roosters?!

[Lround]

I was given six Pekin bantams all 1 week old, I took a gamble when it came to the sex of the chicks, they are now 4 weeks old and its looking like I have two roosters... My question is, Is there any way I can keep them both?
Any help will be great!
Thanks!

 

[Ridgerunner]

There are certainly ways to keep them both. A lot of what you do will depend on your goals and your facilities. The more room you have the more options you have. If space is fairly tight you can still do it but it gets harder.

If they are kept together with the females the males will determine who is boss. That may be a fight to the death, especially if room is tight, but with sufficient room they normally work it out without serious injury or death. You are dealing with living animals so I can’t give you guarantees with any of this but I can tell you what usually happens.

If you have enough room that the two males can split the hens up where each has his own harem and they can stay away from each other, things get pretty easy. They sort out which is dominant, which hens they get, and they go their merry way. It’s not a case of so many square feet per chicken, its can they get far enough away from each other to avoid problems. If you don’t have that kind of room they may work it out anyway but the tighter it is the riskier it is.

If room is tight you can build two separate pens. What you put in each pen depends on your goals and desires. You could create a bachelor pad where only males are allowed. As long as they don’t have hens to fight over they normally get along fine. Sometimes a bachelor pad need to be totally isolated from the hens, sometimes it doesn’t seem to matter if the hens are housed right next door. If you want you can put one rooster with his own harem in these pens. Again it may or may not matter if they can see each other.

If you wish you can house the two roosters together, the hens separate, and occasionally put one of the roosters with the hens for breeding purposes. There is the chance there will be a fight when you put the two roosters back together but many people manage their flocks this way. What you don’t want to do is to separate the roosters and then put them back together later with hens present. That is pretty much a guaranteed fight.

People will give you all kinds of dire things that will happen if you don’t have a lot more hens for two roosters. The hens will lose feathers, be over-mated, be harassed, gang-raped, all that. Many breeders keep breeding pairs or trios together without any of that. It’s quite possible one rooster with one or two hens will get along fine, it’s possible two roosters and four hens will get along OK without any of that stuff. A lot depends on the personality of the roosters and the hens. How much room you have has an effect too.

But the biggest factor that makes the breeders successful is that they use roosters and hens, not cockerels and pullets. Juveniles going through puberty can get really rough. Watching that is not for the faint of heart. If you do keep one or both cockerels you will probably need to manage that phase of their development. That probably means keep them separated from the pullets until they mature, maybe at a year old.

I always try to suggest you keep as few roosters as you can and still meet your goals. That is not because you are guaranteed problems with more roosters, just that problems are more likely. In your case I’d think really hard about zero or one instead of two. The only reason you need a rooster is if you want fertile eggs. Everything else is personal preference.