Young aggressive roosters.?

[fishmanwill]

Good evening,

I could really use your help. We have 2 Welsummer roosters that are becoming aggressive. They are young only 22 weeks old. We would like to keep one as they are beautiful but may not be able to. About 2 weeks ago one of them jumped on my 2 year old daughter while she was feeding them corn. She has been around them their whole lives and they use to eat out of her hand(the hens still will, we have 24 hens). The one attacked her and knocked her to the ground. Then 3 days ago she had a friend over to play and he got attacked by the other one. He did nothing to provoke him the rooster come from across the yard to get him so fast I couldn't stop it. Then tonight the same one fluffed up to my daughter and was going to attack but I was able to intervene.

Can I do anything since they are young? Or is it time to part with them? We have 3 roosters. Those 2 and one buff Orfington. The buff is about a year old and a super friendly.. Is it because we have 3 roosters, do we need less? They are free ranging everyday.

Any help or suggestions? Thank you.

 

[chicknmania]

Picking up the aggressive ones and carrying them around whenever they attack seems to help. Well it did for us with our one cockerel that bit. He didn't attack, he just bit. I mean he would walk up and bite for no reason. So I started picking him up and petting him when he did that. He turned out to be the sweetest, tamest rooster we've ever had. I've read that method has worked for others too. But all of our roosters right now are friendly and non aggressive, so i haven't had a lot of experience with it.

 

[mightymax]

It could be that those two younger ones are trying to establish themselves in your 'chicken hierarchy', if you will. They probably already know the the Buff Orp. is the ruler of the roost and so they're both competing for the junior rooster position. Since it appears he only attacks small children (who are more likely to be on their level, size wise), and only one of them is attacking, you could re-home that one and keep the other one and see what happens. But if push comes to shove, I wouldn't keep a rooster around my children that I couldn't trust. Hope that helps. Oh, and the carrying them around idea is a good one and it has worked for me too, it's just that usually the person doing the carrying should be the one that he is attacking. It's a dominance thing and I doubt your young child would want to carry around a rooster that's attacked her in the past.

 

[aart]

Multiple roosters can be asking for big trouble...they compete and that almost always causes problems depending on housing arrangements.

Multiple roosters running around free with 2 year olds?!?!?
Not a good idea at all, get those roosters put away safely or be ready to pay the price with an injured(possibly severely traumatized/injured/blinded) child.