Was I too rough on my little rooster?

[lurky]

I totally agree with Mona....... I think Mona's reply was VERY mature and responsible. I have read over and over and over about the dangers of holding a chicken/bird upside down like that. Anytime you mistreat a rooster you will lose their trust and make the situation worse. I hope you trust your feeling of it being wrong and try mona's suggestion. I know it can get frustrating when a rooster is being a rooster. Good Luck to you. I prefer to keep bantam roosters.......they are much easier to 'talk to'

 

[greathorse]

on one hand I have never understood the value of holding a rooster upside down in order to teach them anything. I beleive if one moves and behaves in a manner that demands respect, unless you have a bad un you will have few issues.

On the other hand in all the tens of thousands of chickens handled by the folks on this site and the simply millions that get handled upside down for harvest, I have yet to hear of one that suffocated or had a collpased lung. I would not argue that it as not happened, but would challenge anyone to site one case of this having occured

 

[moonflowers]

Thank you all for your responses. I was very upset for a little while there when I got home and read all of that, (I had NO IDEA it could KILL them) I thought I was doing as I should. They actually were out in the yard and had plenty of room to run but he had cornered them in this little area with some tomato cages in it and they couldn't get out. Regardless, what I did worked and he did not go back to attacking them. I had intervened a little before but only to kind of break it up. This seemed a lot more serious than that so I took more drastic action. I would not probably do it again because of my own emotional trauma from the experience and because of what I've read on here but he seemed fine afterwards and has not made any aggressive noises towards me since then, which he had been doing the past few days. I hope he is just being immature and that he will mature into a great rooster who takes good care of his flock. I'd read that article which is what made me do it to begin with so at least I am doing the best I can and I DO love and care for all my chickens so it is not like I was being intentionally cruel just for the heck of it. Ultimately I DO have to be the dominate roo in the flock as I am the smartest of all of them and have their safety in mind. I now understand the possible dire consequences of what I did and I have all of you to thank for that. Also thanks to those of you who offered comfort because I have to admit I felt like an evil evil person for a few minutes there.
edit: actually, now that I look that is NOT the article that I read, it was one written by someone else.

 

[Judy]

Yes, please be easy on yourself about this. You were following advice and doing what you thought was best to protect part of your flock. You weren't trying to be cruel, and you had made an effort to find out what to do, to learn.

Fact is, if it stopped his attack, and kept the chicks safe, you probably made a great choice. Hindsight is 20/20.

There are people on here who have used the upside down thing for years -- but they don't do it for long. I've never heard of a chicken actually dying from it, either, but that doesn't mean it can't happen. They actually have two different respiratory systems, so that might affect the outcome as well.