Rooster Question | Aggressive Towards Hens | Need Advice | Long Post...

[Butt_Nugget_Hut092]

So, I have a question about chicken behavior, possible solutions, and advice...
I apologize in advance for the lengthy post and explanation.
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A little backstory to explain the situation...
I am a relatively new chicken owner. I've had chickens for a little over a year now and have dealt with various issues. I've made an effort to educate myself about chickens, their needs, and their health issues, but I'm still learning and trying to improve.

I have five laying hens that turned a year old on September 16th. They are just barnyard mixes, and they're as sweet as can be. They were hatched and raised with roosters, but the roosters they were raised with were rehomed because they were not only mean to us but also very mean to the hens. They would violently grab the hens and pull out their feathers but never attempt to mount them. They would also chase the hens away from the food. I was hoping at that one of the two roosters they were hatched with would take to the hens and then the other one would go, but that didn't happen. So, my laying hens have been living without any roosters for more than half of their lives and go down into the rooster pose for us instead.

Well, fast-forward to this season, we decided to add more chickens to our coop.
We have a group of ten 21-week-old chickens that we've added, which include two roosters. They have been fully integrated into the coop for about three weeks now, but they spent three weeks prior to that in an introduction cage/run inside the larger run so they could safely meet without getting hurt.
After they were integrated, we put our youngest group of chicks into the introduction run. They are only 15 weeks old. My older hens and Group A of the new chickens cannot physically reach Group B chicks.
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Okay, long backstory, I apologize. But my older hens are not amused by the roosters. At first, the roosters were too scared to go near my older girls, but within the last week or week and a half, they've gotten bold and started trying to assert their dominance and mount them.

My older girls are not having it. They fight them and will not allow them to mount them. The roosters then seem to get angry and become more aggressive with them. It's starting to worry me how aggressive they've become towards my girls.
Not even the hens they were raised with want anything to do with them and scream when they try.
I spoke to a local chicken farmer, and she said it was because my roosters are young and inexperienced, which my hens know, so they want nothing to do with them.
Which would be fine if I was sure that they wouldn't actually hurt my girls as they are learning.
But just this afternoon, I watched my rooster Foghorn go after my hen Belle, but instead of trying to mount her, he chased her, then grabbed her by the neck while standing in front of her. There was no attempt to mount her. She's fine; I stopped whatever he was doing.
But now I'm concerned for my girls' safety. The boys are definitely stressing them out too.So I'm not sure what to do at this point and I'm looking for advice, suggestions, and if anyone can tell me if this is normal. Also, will my hens be safe if I leave the boys in there with them while they learn what they are doing?

For reference, in case this is useful the roosters are mixes...
Rhode Island Red Roo X White Leghorn Hen
Rhode Island Red Roo X Olive Egger Hen

 

[nuthatched]

Get rid of the new roos. Next year, get a cockerel chick and let the hens raise him

 

[Mrs. K]

Roosters are a crap shoot. You really don't need one, and often times they don't really turn out.

You really have added a lot of birds to the original 5. That is going to take quite a bit of space. Space or lack of it, causes a lot of problems. Could you post pictures of your set up. How you have the run set up can also cause problems. Overcrowding can make any conflict much worse.

If you do have enough space, I am not sure how many B chicks you have - but your numbers are approaching 20? Really you don't need two roosters.

Roosters take some experience, what I would suggest is contacting your local 4-H groups, post at the feed store, contact the extension office or a poultry club, and get a year old rooster, that has been raised up in a multi- generational flock and is so darn nice that he hasn't been culled by people who would cull him if he wasn't. This is if you are sure you want roosters, a lot of people are much happier without them.

Older roosters often times manage a flock much better. The above advice is also good, but do know, there really is no perfect way to raise up a perfect rooster. I am rather of the opinion you can get rotten roosters easily, so-so rooster a fair amount of the time, and then a flock master, maybe 2-3 times in a long time of keeping chickens. I have had 2, and a darn good one out of a lot of roosters.

Let these two boys go, they are just not old enough for the mature ladies, and the pullets can't do anything with them.

Mrs K

 

[Shadrach]

There isn't a lot of please and thank you in the chickens world. Manners and maturity are aquired over tme. Development seems to come in stages and cockerel/s learning to behave within the group is one of those stages.
An established adult rooster can help as can a strong lead hen.
Hatching within the group can also help but even this doesn't give certain results.
Normal social patterns would be for the cockerels to want to leave the group/parents and establish his own group. Very few chicken keeping arrangements allow for this given confinement and space. One can under some circumstances see the leaving home stage develope; the next generation attempting to roost up a tree rather than the group coop is one indicator.
For most backyad chicken keepers the easy life rule one male in a confined/partially confined group.
There are occasions when two males will coexists but one often finds that it's a question of time rather than if a junior male will challenge the adult male for the right to mate with the hens.
Tough advice is eat the two new males and when a hen goes broody let her sit and hatch and work with the males from that hatch to prepare a cockerel to become the a replacemnt male for the current senior male.