What went wrong?

[Farmgirl283420]

I have never had a truly aggressive male turn back into a "good" one, and no techniques have worked either. What he did doesn't sound too positive. If you want, you han try and handle his behaviour. If you can't handle him, give him to said home, with full disclosure. Some people say that human imprinted males turn aggressive. I have no experience there, so I cannot comment on that. Lots also say that an overly friendly cockerel turns into an aggressive male in the future, adding that their friendliness is in reality them "testing the waters". My experience has been the complete opposite. I suggest you heed both. I would also like to point you towards this excellent resource


Article 'Understanding Your Rooster.' https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/understanding-your-rooster.75056/

Thanks I’ll have to read this. Frustrating when you raise them and you seem on good terms then they turn and attack you just when you think everything is going right.

 

[Mrs. K]

As for him not attacking you again, they are opportunist. He is waiting. When you are busy paying attention to something else, he will get you. I agree with the above, once they become aggressive, very, very seldom do they go back to nice. Any intact male animal one needs to be very aware.

I would send him to your other option. I do not care to be attacked by anything, and often times, those birds are causing a lot of tension in the flock. Always solve for peace in the flock, for me and the flock.

 

[Farmgirl283420]

As for him not attacking you again, they are opportunist. He is waiting. When you are busy paying attention to something else, he will get you. I agree with the above, once they become aggressive, very, very seldom do they go back to nice. Any intact male animal one needs to be very aware.

I would send him to your other option. I do not care to be attacked by anything, and often times, those birds are causing a lot of tension in the flock. Always solve for peace in the flock, for me and the flock.

Ok my boys just started fighting so think one needs to go should I send him away?

 

[Mrs. K]

Yes you should. They are telling you as loud as they can that this is not going to work. It will not start working next week unless you do something. Chicken flocks have to be managed by their human caretaker or it gets uglier and uglier.

Do not keep the one that attacked you. He is following a very common pattern, they tend to attack children first, then women, and then men. They become more and more and more aggressive. Once they become aggressive, IMO it is too late to do any training.

Personally, there is a theory on here that I agree with: that pet roosters that are cuddled and made much of, often are the ones that become the most human aggressive. They do not have a natural fear of people. Fear in the chicken world is respect. Chickens of high respect have the right to the space. My roosters are not pets, they are not terrified of me, but they just naturally move away from me. That is how I like it. If you want a cuddly flock, I would just have hens.

Mrs K

 

[SamLockwood]

I have tons of advice for rehabilitating pushy roosters that don't respect boundaries. If the situation escalates to full-on attacks, the only realistic options are cull or re-home.

Poultry have a very rudimentary central nervous system, and you can't anthropomorphize their behavior and expect it to work: most of their behavior is hard-wired, and their capacity for learning (while relatively impressive) is a lot more limited. Roosters put everything they encounter into one of three basic categories: threat, mate, or food.

Now, they're not that bright so you can sort of "hack" their brains and you can enjoy a sort of "neutral" status where they don't think you're a threat, don't want to mate with you, and associate you with food while not actually being food.

The problem is that if you're one of those people that likes to treat your chickens as dear pets, this has the potential for problems with dominant roosters. With chickens, physical contact limited either to aggression or it's related to mating.

So if you go into your pen to pet your chickens, they either think you're attacking or exerting your dominance over them or that it's a mating. Many first-time chicken keepers misinterpret a hen squatting with her wings out and head down as "She want's me to pet her." Actually, it's a submissive mating posture. She's not saying "pet me mommy" but "mount me daddy."

A lot of the "my sweetheart roo turned mean" really is just you have a dominant rooster that grew up and your behavior to the hens is making that rooster think you're a rival.
This is especially true if you tend to also give the flock treats.

One common rooster behavior is called "tidbitting": a rooster will dig up or find a tasty treat and instead of eating it will pick it up and drop it while making a distinctive clucking noise to gain the attention of a hen and then let them eat the treat in hopes of her letting him mate with her.

A good way to make a dominant rooster your friend is when it's treat time toss the treats to him first. He'll do the tidbitting routine and his little brain will regard you as a source of treats that help him pick up hens. Otherwise if you're tossing treats to the hens you're setting yourself up as a rival. It sounds crazy from a human perspective but you're talking about a creature whose entire brain is a fraction of the size of that tiny part of the human brain that lets us breathe and pump blood without thinking about it.

Roosters will also scout safe nesting spaces as well: they'll crawl into the nest and make this weird sort of croaking noise. If you set up beds for the chickens or try to persuade them into a nesting box, this is another rooster behavior you're emulating and the rooster may think you're stealing his mates.

Another common error that pet owners make is ignoring "boundary pushing" at an early age either because they are over-indulgent or they dismiss it as "cute" or "not important" because of the animal's young age or they simply don't even realize what it really is.

Animals don't really have a "childhood." Even a lot of "play" by young animals is really training for adulthood. You'll especially see this in a multi-generational flock. One of the things my roosters did when I started integrating more chicks this fall was they "adopted" the youngsters. They kept the hens from bullying them, and one of them even started training them: showing them where to find the best forage and how to hide from predators. I even saw him demonstrating danger-calls to them.

The one thing none of these "foster dads" put up with was challenges from the youngsters. One of the more exuberant young cockerels approached one of the other roos with is hackles up to "play fight" with him and instantly found himself pinned to the ground with his comb pinched.

Boundary-pushing is things like a hard peck or bite when you're too slow distributing treats, or they engage in herding behavior with you. The latter is either they sort of lunge at you or they do the "rooster dance" where they walk a half circle with one wing low.

Some people are big fans of dealing with this by grabbing the offending rooster and either pinning it (mimicking the kind of submission holds chickens will put each other in when establishing or reinforcing the pecking order) or grabbing them and holding them by their feet upside down.

I'm not really a fan of that sort of escalation for something as minor as uppity behavior. If I get pecked by any chicken (hen or roo) beyond the sort of light "grooming" peck hens sometimes do, I give the bird a shove with a hand or foot (enough to move it a foot or two to get its attention) and then I stand up full height, hands on hips and elbows akimbo, and shake my head. If you watch your roosters enough, head wagging or shaking is their way of saying "I am annoyed with you."

This has worked well for me, they usually stop whatever the hell they're doing and over time they seem to get the point, and I don't have to manhandle a bird in front of the whole flock (which only stresses them all out).

I'm bringing this up not because I think your aggressive rooster (Almonzo) is savable. It's because Royal may be a "good boy" by inclination or he's simply taking the submissive role because Almonzo is in charge. It's quite possible once Almonzo's out of the way Royal may end up the same or worse.

Pecking order is everything to chickens: I had a rooster that was pushy and I was considering culling until he got deposed. He still follows me around, but now his attitude is fawning instead of wary. I was worried about his successor being even worse, but while he does watch me closely when I'm collecting eggs, he stays out of my personal space. He did become a Chatty Cathy: so when he follows me he's constantly clucking and burbling (before he was pretty quiet).

Good luck, but one way or the other Almonzo will be leaving you. Attacks like that will only escalate until he either seriously injures himself or you do it just trying to defend yourself. Roosters are pretty devious and once he figures out frontal attacks don't work he'll try to ambush you.

My mom almost lost an eye when a polish bantam we had hung out on this treestump near the chicken coop, acting totally relaxed. He jumped at her face from his perch as she walked by, and if she didn't have a water jug in her hand he'd have gashed her good: his spur made a 2" cut in a plastic milk jug (there was a loud "crack" when hit, too). I never knew mom had reflexes that good.

 

[Mrs. K]

Samlockwood - that is an excellent post! Realistic and true.

 

[Northern Hen]

Sigh it was when he was out free ranging and I was watching them this little kid doesn’t go in the run or coop but yes you’re right he might have to go. Ugh why does it always seem to turn out this way? Technically I know why it’s just hard to except.

My rooster or I should say cockerel will be a year in February. He and his brother have been fantastic! His brother Royal still sits on my lap. Almanzo is the head rooster even though he’s smaller and has only ever attacked a little kid always great with me. I raised him from a chick he always loved cuddling with me. I get he’s older now and he either has spurs or they almost have points. This morning I let them out and was just standing there. The girls usually wait awhile because he’s so frisky in the morning. Well he gave me the evil eye and for the first time ever attacked me trying to use his spurs on my leg I held up my boot and he just kept jumping and jumping at it with his spurs his pretty neck feathers flared. He got really tired started breathing hard slightly wheezing. A family member came out and distracted him with grass so I could get out without kicking him. Sheesh my leg aches from holding it up so long though he didn’t land a scratch on me. I went out a few more times today in the run he was fine. I didn’t give him any ground but maybe I should’ve chased him away not stood for letting him I attack me. He’s been great I love him. I thought he trusted me as I raised him like a mother hen he would snuggle under my arms. I do have a good home for him if he needs to go I prefer not to. I don’t really want to give up sitting and cuddling with my girls and his brother. How should I deal with this he seems fine now. How do you recommend dealing with him? And I will never ever kill him!!!! So that’s not an option but I would love to hear your thoughts!

Give it some time.. I had issues with my adult rooster. He felt threatened by me and did attack me with his spurrs. hurt me badly. With help I put him in rooster jail for a day. He was so worried about the hens when he was in jail.. I felt for him. I let him out of "jail" (a dog cage) the next day to mind his hens. I had a few more times with him attacking me. Once I grabbed him by the legs, holding him upside down for a short while till he settled down.. I hand feed him and praise him when he does a good job roostering. He has not attacked me for a long while now. I think he no longer sees me as a threat and i appreciate that he is a good minder of the flock. I think I just did not understand roosters.

 

[NorthwoodsChick]

Give it some time..

With all due respect, this is not good advice for the OP. The rooster has attacked children and the owner, and now fighting with other birds. This rooster WILL hurt a child if he free ranges, or he WILL hurt the other chickens either physically or through stress.
Mrs K is spot on- get rid of the problem rooster immediately.