I chose a year, but I knew that Odin was a bad egg before that. I think 6 months is too soon though.. at 6 months he was still safe to be let out when my kids were around, but by the following spring I would only let him out when I was the only person outside. During the winter I was able to enter his space (crawling) to unblock the pop door and he didn't mess with me, but by a year I was getting more wary of him (those spurs!), at 15 months I rarely let him loose and knew what had to be done, but it wasn't until about 18 months that I finally did it. [<world's longest run-on sentence]