Too Many Roosters?

[fradytrc]

I am a rookie in the chicken world..I have 23 chickens, 9 roosters and the rest hens. They are about 4 1/2 months old. Things have been going well although I haven't had any eggs laid yet. I have been told that I need to get rid of some of the roosters. What is your advice?

 

[sourland]

I would recommend getting rid of all but 2 of the roosters. All is fine now, but when they start jostling for position and start breeding the hens-- watch out! That many roosters harassing the hens will cause much stress and possibly physical damage to them.

 

[denco5]

I to had to many roosters, all was fine until they got older. I had five and had to go down to just one. They will fight and torment each other and the hens soon, be ready!

 

[chicmom]

Hello there, I personally would keep just one rooster at a time, two at the most.

 

[Runfox]

I have a setup with basicly two flocks next to each other. I have my established flock, and I have the new young adolescents next to them , hoping to eventually let them all be together when the young ones are old enough. I have a rooster with the older hens , and I now see I have a rooster with the young ones too. So can they all eventually become one flock, with two roosters and 15 hens??? My wife was thinking the two roosters would fight. I think the older one will put the younger one in place and they will eventually be ok.

 

[ChestnutRidge]

I have also heard that two roosters will get along better if they were hatchmates and grew up together. They would already have the dominance issues worked out.
I don't know from personal experience, but perhaps if you are going to keep two, try to keep two that have been together from day 1.

ETA: Oh, and

!

 

[fradytrc]

Thanks for the input....Luckily all these were hatchmates....actually a Biology/Agscience project for my daughter...I think I know which 2 I'll keep but splitting the flock with my 4 favorites is also a possibility.

 

[RareBreedFancier]

Just remember if you thinking of keeping 4 roos and splitting the flock and you only have 14 hens, the general recommendations are 8 - 10 hens per roo.

You either need more hens or a maximum of 2 roos for 14 hens. You can try having less hens per roo but that usually leads to harassed, bare backed hens. Trust me, I've had to build bachelor pen to split the sexes up at my place till I dispatch the extra roos. They don't fight with each other but they are far to hard on the hens to live with them.

 

[cubalaya]

i think it depends on the breed. cubalaya roosters seem to do fine with 2 or 3 hens while australorp roos could handle 8 to 10 hens.

 

[Blue]

Quote:
X2 I've had some roosters (of various mixes and breeds) work great with only a couple hens, but I've also had roosters who wore the feathers off the hens' backs when they only had a few hens.