BDutch's bantam flock & natural breeding projects #5 🪺 🪺 and #6

[BDutch]

Wednesday: picked Whisky up and punt him in the playhouse with Gin&Tonic.
Thursday: The whole family was in the playhouse including Ini mini.

Friday: The juveniles invented something new. Party time in the extension coop.
Only Tonic was in the Playhouse coop. Whisky and Gin both seem to think they are getting too old for the childrens playhouse. 7 chickens in the extension.

Until I picked Whisky up to accompany his sister.
Btw. Janice sleeps in the small coop as usual.

 

[MaryJanet]

Wednesday: picked Whisky up and punt him in the playhouse with Gin&Tonic.
Thursday: The whole family was in the playhouse including Ini mini.

Friday: The juveniles invented something new. Party time in the extension coop.
Only Tonic was in the Playhouse coop. Whisky and Gin both seem to think they are getting too old for the childrens playhouse. 7 chickens in the extension.

Until I picked Whisky up to accompany his sister.
Btw. Janice sleeps in the small coop as usual.

Lots of experimental roosting!

 

[BDutch]

The need of the playhouse coop has ended according to the flock.
Yesterday I found all chickens in the extension (except Janice who prefers her own space).
I picked Whisky up again and put him in the playhouse to muffle his voice. He spend the night alone. And started to crow more than an hour before sunrise.

I’m considering to lock him up in his own domain permanently. Giving him a part of the second run and the playhouse coop. 4 m2 should be enough I suppose. That way he can see the flock but not hurt the older ladies. They are so tiny compared to this bantam Amrock heavyweight.

I don’t know what else to do as long as I have hope someone will come to take hime to another flock with bigger hens.
Ideas and a discussion are very welcome.

 

[Perris]

Ideas and a discussion are very welcome

He's a lovely looking chap. Does he weigh that much more than the girls you are worried about? Are they really fragile?

I don't recall coming across any proper research about size differences between the sexes in birds and their consequences (off the top of my head, I can't think of bird species where there's a big difference, unlike in, say, mammals, where it's quite common, and most females bear it OK), but you might want to look on google scholar for guidance?

 

[BDutch]

Does he weigh that much more than the girls you are worried about?

Papers are rarely about very mixed flocks with different sizes and ages. I didn’t even try to find info for that reason. But I give it try. Thanks for the tip.

Maybe @ManueB has a view on this with Chippie being so much smaller?

I can see he is well over 1 kilo, estimate 1200 grams (need to weigh to be sure).
The Dutch females are around 500 -550 grams. Katrientje is a bit bigger (850 grams). And GinTonic too of course, but they are not ready to lay.

The oldies are not as fast as they used to be. Black and Pearl are 9 yo. Ini mini is 10 yo.
Only Kraai is standing up to him. And I think Janice has a way avoid him.

So far he was mainly interested in Pearl. I think Janice and Pearl are the 2 who are still laying some eggs.

 

[BDutch]

See the difference?

 

[Perris]

Papers are rarely about very mixed flocks with different sizes and ages

They are rarely about real chickens! It's quite shocking how unrepresentative they are, when you get down into the weeds of the methods sections. A lot of distortions are introduced in the name of making all other things equal, bar the thing specifically being investigated. So they start with highly selected inbred lines of production chickens. They choose as near as they can get to identical birds for the experiments. They are often reporting results which involved only sterile chicks, only up to a few weeks old. Sometimes they report results based on older, but cecetomized, birds (birds that have had their caeca surgically removed before the trials started, because the caeca complicate all studies of digestion [that's because the caeca have a large role and impact on digestion ]); so how valid are results even for whole/entire birds of the same inbred production breeds, based on tests on birds who lack that part of their digestive system, one wonders? I could go on, but I'll spare you another rant on that topic

So far he was mainly interested in Pearl. I think Janice and Pearl are the 2 who are still laying some eggs.

And I think Janice has a way avoid him.

So he has good instincts and is well-behaved, and Janice is smart

he is well over 1 kilo, estimate 1200 grams (need to weigh to be sure).
The Dutch females are around 500 -550 grams. Katrientje is a bit bigger (850 grams).

That is quite a big difference. But Henry is huge relative to the females he lives with, and it doesn't seem to trouble Fret. Or maybe @Shadrach knows otherwise. Maybe he knows what their relative weights are too.

 

[BDutch]

You may already know all this, but I’ll include it anyway so you know what to expect when you have mature hens and a mature rooster in your flock. This is between mature consenting adults. Immature chickens, especially cockerels, are different. It can get pretty wild.

Typical mating behavior between mature consenting adults.

The rooster dances for a specific hen. He lowers one wing and sort of circles her. This signals his intent.

The hen squats. This gets her body onto the ground so the rooster’s weight goes into the ground through her entire body and not just her legs. That way she can support a much heavier rooster without hurting her legs.

The rooster hops on and grabs the back of her head. The head grab helps him get in the right position to hit the target and helps him to keep his balance, but its major purpose is to tell the hen to raise her tail out of the way to expose the target. A mating will not be successful if she does not raise her tail and expose the target. The head grab is necessary.

The rooster touches vents and hops off. This may be over in the blink of an eye or it may take a few seconds. But when this is over the rooster’s part is done.

The hen then stands up, fluffs up, and shakes. This fluffy shake gets the sperm into a special container inside the hen near where the egg starts its internal journey through her internal egg making factory.

You’ll notice that the hen squats. That gets the weight into the ground through her body, not her legs. Roosters are normally bigger, sometimes quite a bit bigger, than hens of the same breed. Some people keep bantam hems with full sized roosters and don’t have any problems when they mate because of that squatting. They are living animals so I can’t give you any guarantees. Plus the more difference in size the easier for something bad to happen, but personally I would not worry about a Brahma rooster and that hen.

This has come up before so I’ll clarify it. I really don’t know how much you already know so please don’t be offended. A rooster does not have a male part that penetrates the hen. He fertilizes the eggs by touching vents, no penetration. The risk is from the weight of the rooster when he is on top of the hen.

A Brahma is a large chicken but they are slow to mature. The cockerels are mostly bones until they hit a maturity level where they finally start putting on meat. If you plan to butcher at a relatively young age they may not be the best choice for your goals. People do use Brahmas for meat so it’s not an awful choice, but you may be better off getting a smaller rooster that puts on meat faster.

When you add a cockerel to a flock of mature hens, the hens sometimes are pretty vicious toward him until he matures enough to take over his flock duties. Same when you raise a male chick with the flock after he hits puberty. Sometimes as he matures but before he reaches maturity he can be pretty forceful. It doesn’t always happen. I’ve raised cockerels in a flock of mature hens with no mature rooster and it has usually gone really peacefully, it actually usually goes without a lot of drama for me but I have a lot of room. I think that makes a big difference. Still, I have seen drama and if you read through this forum, lots of other people have too. I think you are better off adding a mature rooster who will immediately mate a hen or two to show he is boss and just take over the dominant position.
….
I raise my cockerels with the flock, usually with a dominant rooster running the flock. Sometimes there is drama, but often not a lot. Lots of people successfully raise males with a flock of mature hens with or without a dominant rooster in the flock without a lot of drama but the cockerel’s adolescence can impart a lot of drama. Again, not always. There is some luck involved.

Probably a lot more than you wanted. Good luck on the move.

Thanks Ridgerunner.
I copied your reaction in an old thread to here. (And left something irrelevant out).
It gives good info about maturing cockerels. Because Im worried about the combination of my 5 months old large bantam cockerel Whisky and my old very tiny bantams.

Whisky is not overeager to mate. But I heard Black shriek a few times when he grabbed her to mate. He is not interested in his immature sisters or the moulting hens.

 

[Perris]

some hens are drama queens. I wouldn't react just to the volume or acuity of their voices.

 

[ManueB]

Here is my experience and my opinion.
My smallest hen, Chipie, has never been wounded although the difference ratio is much more important (3.5 kilo to 800g) . She is a senior and very well liked by Gaston but she is clever enough to avoid him when he is giving signs that he will try to mate. It does happen once in a while, maybe once in a week. Then she crouches so low that she doesn't get hurt.

Then, I can tell you about the circumstances in which Piou-piou got more than hurt, actually wounded. Gaston only had access to three pullets then and two were broody, so he was only mating Piou-piou. Not only was she only 1kg compared to his 3, but she was always willing and even if not, she wasn't sufficiently mobile to avoid him. And she was a young tough pullet in love and so did not show any signs of pain or fear until the wound was quite bad.

I think the weight issue is only one factor. From my experience the most important risk comes from overmating. When Pied-beau was still here he used to form a couple with Lilly, who was exactly the right size for him and had a huge fluff. But he mated her maybe 15 times a day because she was the only female accessible and he was overeager. She did not get wounded but her feathers were all broken and she had a few scratches on her back. I would have separated them then, if Pied-Beau hadn't left.

Regarding Whisky, my experience has been that roosters are extremely unhappy to be kept away from their hens. For a period I used to lock up Gaston every morning for two to three hours so that the ex-batts could free range without stress : he utterly hated it.
I would personally not keep a male locked up all day in sight of the hens alone. I think it's a terrible punishment regarding something that you only fear will happen, but hasn't yet. I would do some of the following things depending on what's possible or not for you. Trim and file his nails rounded. Have him locked up an hour in the morning/evening which the time of the day when the males are eager to mate. Alternately, lock a few of the hens you are more worried about and leave him out with the others. Get ahead a hen saddle the right size for your bantams and check them regularly on the back and under the wings.

If you really feel that you need to keep him out of reach for the whole day, I would leave with him the hens that he doesn't mate.
That's just my point of view from my own experience. Whisky may react differently from Gaston, and I can't say for sure that he will not hurt one of your hens. You know your chickens best.

One last thing : are you certain of his weight ? The size difference in the picture seems much more important!