Game rooster behavior and fighting

[ElizaMay]

He is correcting the mistakes he sees here. There is absolutely nothing wrong or insulting about that. I’m not sure why you are so offended by that. Maybe grow some thicker skin.

Because he didn't *start* by correcting the mistakes.

He started with this at Tanquerey:

You’re spewing an awful lot of misinformation, especially for a scientist.

So being new to gamefowl I asked,

Could you point out some instances of misinformation? I'd like to be able to understand, without having to fine-comb through multiple posts.

The response was:

If you’re interested in gamefowl do some research on them and then come back and read this thread. You’ll find it all easy enough

I said I didn't expect links or a long work-intensive explanation, just point me to some specifics of what they were saying was wrong, so * I could do the research work * and teach myself. JUST WHAT HE ASKED ME TO DO.

Roosterhavoc replied

@ElizaMay it’s pretty much this whole post

But after that generality he FINALLY provided specifics, which was great, very helpful to someone just being introduced to gamefowl, but familiar with standard poultry.

Sadly he then finished with,

If you’re truly interested in learning something it’s up to you to learn. Expecting someone else to teach you is an entitled mentality. Good day.

So I was TRYING to learn, willing to do the research work when given some small clue where to start looking, then told I was entitled for asking and the door slammed in my face with a dismissive 'Good day'.

The point where Roosterhavoc began 'correcting the mistakes' as you call it in this looooong thread, was quite far along in the discussion (at the time) and only after I asked and asked and got slapped for asking.

It doesn't need to be this way.

 

[ElizaMay]

The relevance is that if my observation is correct, chickens have the ability to biologically cope with a strong aggression drive, which further supports the notion that fatal aggression between roosters is very natural to chickens.

That is something interesting!
I will see if I can find research on red jungle fowl and if/how there is tolerance for immature and mature males. Just because I wonder at how much fatal aggression is natural to the poultry originator species, and/or if it has been bred more into gamefowl by humans.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

That is something interesting!
I will see if I can find research on red jungle fowl and if/how there is tolerance for immature and mature males. Just because I wonder at how much fatal aggression is natural to the poultry originator species, and/or if it has been bred more into gamefowl by humans.

I’ve never looked into the research for red jungle fowl, but I know that other species of birds have been shown to dull their colors to stay alive or at least stay under the radar of dominant males. I also know as it relates to aggression that North American wild turkeys can be hellacious fighters and they’re just a genetic stone’s throw away from being chickens as familiar relationships are concerned.

One major difference between a pure red jungle fowl and later iterations as domestic poultry are how seasonal red junglefowl are with their breeding cycle and hormones. I would bet that at the height of their breeding season red jungle fowl males of similar age and health will fight to serious bodily injury or death. That would be the primary purpose of their spurs. Then when breeding season is over they probably become very chill as they cycle into their eclipse molt and lose their breeding plumage and comb size/coloration. Not unlike the cycle whitetail deer have.

At some point in chicken history we minimized their seasonal cycles and made them breed for most of the year. That’s why our roosters keep their bright plumage and big combs for most of the season. So when we look at red jungle fowl to determine how much aggression is natural compared to domestic gamefowl, we need to be considering RJF at the height of their breeding cycle, not during their off season which our chickens generally don’t have anymore except for their molt.

 

[ElizaMay]

I’ve never looked into the research for red jungle fowl, but I know that other species of birds have been shown to dull their colors to stay alive or at least stay under the radar of dominant males. I also know as it relates to aggression that North American wild turkeys can be hellacious fighters and they’re just a genetic stone’s throw away from being chickens as familiar relationships are concerned.

One major difference between a pure red jungle fowl and later iterations as domestic poultry are how seasonal red junglefowl are with their breeding cycle and hormones. I would bet that at the height of their breeding season red jungle fowl males of similar age and health will fight to serious bodily injury or death. That would be the primary purpose of their spurs. Then when breeding season is over they probably become very chill as they cycle into their eclipse molt and lose their breeding plumage and comb size/coloration. Not unlike the cycle whitetail deer have.

At some point in chicken history we minimized their seasonal cycles and made them breed for most of the year. That’s why our roosters keep their bright plumage and big combs for most of the season. So when we look at red jungle fowl to determine how much aggression is natural compared to domestic gamefowl, we need to be considering RJF at the height of their breeding cycle, not during their off season which our chickens generally don’t have anymore except for their molt.

Well said, re deer comparison and a rut promoting extra territoriality and aggression.

Yes, I did go and look around a bit online this morning (for what appeared more reputable sources such as edu sites and research papers among other things) and read that they had seasonal reproduction - which makes sense as I can't think of any wild birds that don't, it's only human interference that has set their natural rhythms on their ear, IMO.

I did also read that they live in smaller groups in defended territories, where they'll have several hens and sometimes one or two other subordinate males. That tells me that there isn't always the urge to attack and kill any other male in sight in the progenitor of our domestic chickens.
The author of the study I was reading (Eben Gering, evelutionary ecologist at MSU) mentions he hopes to also study soon what attracts females in the feral hybrid birds he's currently studying in Kaui. The article mentions in both domesticated chickens and red junglefowls, at least, females pay close attention to males' eye color, neck wattle, body size, and most importantly, comb size and brightness. You mention above birds dulling their plumage to avoid conflict.
Hell of a topic all around! ❤

 

[MysteryChicken]

That's not my theory at all. There is no gene for aggression. There may be polymorphic contributors to the amount of hormones that are produced that can be selectively bred for, which is also how natural selection would do it, but if there were a gene, it would show up in the population so often that we'd have killer cochins and sadistic silkies.

The argument I'm trying to make is that if the people who know and love the breed perpetuate a false idea that it is genetic, then the people who don't know the breed will believe it. And they will use that as the basis for destroying it.

I have actually almost had a Silkie rooster kill the other, twice two different cases.

The first one a long time ago was really bad. I had to doctor him back to health, he was bloody, & torn up from the other. I had to put the other one down, just to fix the situation.

This second time, two cockerels from a project were trying to kill each other, the fight was going on too long, despite them both being out of breath, they continued. One gotten more bloodied then the other.

It's a natural instinct that can be enhanced, by breeding those roosters to be less tolerant of one another. It's in their genetic make up to fight a rival/stranger bird that enters there territory.

I've had regular roosters kill another during spring when a new Alpha is created through fighting. My flocks go through an alpha swap once a year, & most of the time the loser cowards. First time I actually had deaths though.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Well said, re deer comparison and a rut promoting extra territoriality and aggression.

Yes, I did go and look around a bit online this morning (for what appeared more reputable sources such as edu sites and research papers among other things) and read that they had seasonal reproduction - which makes sense as I can't think of any wild birds that don't, it's only human interference that has set their natural rhythms on their ear, IMO.

I did also read that they live in smaller groups in defended territories, where they'll have several hens and sometimes one or two other subordinate males. That tells me that there isn't always the urge to attack and kill any other male in sight in the progenitor of our domestic chickens.
The author of the study I was reading (Eben Gering, evelutionary ecologist at MSU) mentions he hopes to also study soon what attracts females in the feral hybrid birds he's currently studying in Kaui. The article mentions in both domesticated chickens and red junglefowls, at least, females pay close attention to males' eye color, neck wattle, body size, and most importantly, comb size and brightness. You mention above birds dulling their plumage to avoid conflict.
Hell of a topic all around! ❤

Its not necessarily so in game chickens either (the drive to constantly kill), even high-octane birds used in pit lines. There was a famous cocker named Mike Ratliff who raised his cockerels/stags free range until they were as old as 1 1/2 years. Over the young roosters he would keep a singular mature cock. The stags wouldn’t seriously challenge the mature cock. When the stags would fight each other the mature cock would run in and break up the fight and thus the stags would be kept from killing each other. It was only when the stags near full maturity pushing two years old that Ratliff would move to separate them so they didn’t kill each other or be killed by the brood cock.

I’ve raised a couple of confirmed hellacious gamefowl off of other farms, a pure aseel and an aseel/American cross, and both birds submitted to my Cracker brood cock during their cockerel/stag months while free ranging. I penned them both near the year mark and I moved them both off farm at the 1 1/2 year mark only when it was clear to me that they were approaching the point that they’d fight my brood cock to the death, and I figure my brood cock would stand against them to his death if needbe. I figured my Cracker brood cock would kill either one of them until their spurs got long, and once their spurs were long and sharp they would probably kill my Cracker, being bigger, stronger, birds with high-octane pedigrees. I didn’t want either outcome.

There’s a lot of hype in the gamefowl community. People like to brag about how aggressive their birds are compared to everyone else’s and one way they do that is to having contests about how young their chicks are before they start killing each other. I would recommend taking a lot of that with a grain of salt.

I do believe cockerels raised without contact with a mature cock (such as tie corded birds) develop into more aggressive birds at an earlier age than cockerels that grow up in a free range flock under brood cock. Its basically what one gets from the psychology of never having tasted defeat or domination by something stronger than itself. As where a tie-corded stag may be ready to charge into every other stag it is introduced to, that same stag might have been more chill if raised free range under a brood cock until the stag matured out.

If I was a betting man, I’d put my money that the game drive isn’t necessarily a lot different than the territorial drive of a red jungle fowl at the height of its hormonal cycle. Its most certainly been modified by man, but I bet it hasn’t been ridiculously so. I bet most of the modification had to do with whatever modification made chickens breed for most of the year. The changing of the breeding cycle and the sharpening of the game drive probably went hand-in-hand. In fact it is thought that chickens were domesticated for cock fighting before they were used for food, so selection for roosters that stayed aggressive most of the year could have been what drove the change in chickens to lay most of the year.

 

[Tankueray]

Yep, that’s me.

Awesome, nice to meet you. My backyard is a lot like yours, but rattlesnakes in the water instead of alligators. (The ducks won't go in unless it's freezing.) You definitely have nicer plant life too, everything here has thorns and stickers.

One other observation I’ll add is that some of the free range stags, when they’re at the verge of obtaining their adult bright plumage and large red combs, will take on feminine traits after they get beat up by the brood cock and their colors both featherwise and on their face, as well as their comb size, become subdued until their 18 month molt,

I've observed this as well with non-game breeds. Especially when the alpha roosters are related, unrelated cockerels will crow less (if at all) and take longer to mature (ass beating not required). If the alpha roosters disappear for whatever reason, one of the covert roosters will quickly "mature" and take the top spot. That's how it often works in Red Jungle Fowl too, the backup rooster is almost always related, usually a sibling of the alpha. The biggest difference is that non-game will tolerate lesser males more often than RJF or game, but if the male/female ratio is too low, even those killer silkies will take the rest out. Basic drive to pass on only the genes of the one family that you see in most species. (Females do the same, they can reject the sperm of an undesirable rooster in favor of the broodcock.)

There was a famous cocker named Mike Ratliff

I'm from near where he had his school. His son Dane passed away not long ago and I went to an auction with a bunch of the equipment. It was all going for near retail, so I only ended up with an antique poster.

If I was a betting man, I’d put my money that the game drive isn’t necessarily a lot different than the territorial drive of a red jungle fowl at the height of its hormonal cycle. Its most certainly been modified by man, but I bet it hasn’t been ridiculously so. I bet most of the modification had to do with whatever modification made chickens breed for most of the year. The changing of the breeding cycle and the sharpening of the game drive probably went hand-in-hand. In fact it is thought that chickens were domesticated for cock fighting before they were used for food, so selection for roosters that stayed aggressive most of the year could have been what drove the change in chickens to lay most of the year.

(Background stuff: RJF in the wild only brood something like 7 eggs at a time and twice a year if I remember correctly. Chickens were first domesticated (for fighting) about 6000 B.C., and weren't used for food until around 400 B.C.)

Yes, you're basically right, but I think maybe the other way 'round - like they put more hens in a flock because they didn't lay as many eggs back then, and only one or no roosters, because they were fighters. And they'd choose roosters and hens that were easier to handle, which eventually led to more eggs, but less reproductive vigor and survival skills. I've seen game hens hatch chicks into their teens, but we throw away battery hens and "pure" breeders after two years.

Agonistic behavior (i.e., fighting, pecking, courting, and submission) is linked to hormones and scarcity of resources (including females). More fighting between males seems to correlate to higher fertility and hatch rates, even when the frequency of successful copulation is the same as less aggressive subjects. Fighting alone doesn't determine whether only one rooster will get to survive, it seems to be the amount of chasing and whether the chased submit or not. Gamecocks are unique in that they apparently do not have the ability to submit (no one knows why yet - RJF can show submission), and that's what makes for the whole Thunderdome thing. So the girls swoon over the boys that fight for them.

What's really interesting is that studies of RJF, gamefowl, leghorns, and broilers show that broilers seem to have all their wires crossed because of what they've been bred for and are also aggressive to the hens, which doesn't happen in the other breeds. So broilers have real problems with natural reproduction, and some of the utility breeds are starting to as well (because of lack of male aggression), plus both dominant and recessive white plumage lowers fertility (commercial layers and broilers), so what you said in your video was so spot on it's crazy. No wonder most non-game breeders think that adding in new blood and hybridizing is the way to keep their fertility up, but they've really been selecting against the one thing most closely related to reproductive fitness all along.

Here's a really good review of studies related to aggression through 2006-ish.

And I can't find it right now, but there was a study I saw that was specific to gamefowl and how they are raised (reared, handled, fed, housed, socialized, etc.) which confirmed Ratliff's philosophy - give them nothing and you get mean fighters that don't last a minute, or socialize them and give them plenty of sex and they'll have something to fight for. Again, not so different than other species, eh? (I'm sure it's one of the studies mentioned in the review I linked to, but it's time to do the nightly flock chores, so I'll have to look for it later.)

 

[ElizaMay]

And I can't find it right now, but there was a study I saw that was specific to gamefowl and how they are raised (reared, handled, fed, housed, socialized, etc.) which confirmed Ratliff's philosophy - give them nothing and you get mean fighters that don't last a minute, or socialize them and give them plenty of sex and they'll have something to fight for. Again, not so different than other species, eh?

Yah, yah, all males is CRAZY!!

 

[Tankueray]

Yah, yah, all males is CRAZY!!

Lol. But I have to give the human guys some credit - by far the literal, most crazy people I have met in my life have been other women.

 

[ElizaMay]

Lol. But I have to give the human guys some credit - by far the literal, most crazy people I have met in my life have been other women.

Only cause the men drove 'em that way
(i say no more now)