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0 pointscmrdporcupine5y ago0 comments

I'm surprised you noticed the aggression before 6 months. It's actually hard to even identify roosters as roosters in the first few months. They don't develop their physical traits fully for some time.

Re: birds and rape, wait til you see ducks...

I should note that there are roosters and then there are roosters. We had a really amazing one, a well bred barred rock who was a real gentleman. They have an important role in the flock, warning about and fending off predators. He died after sustaining wounds from diverting a fox over 100 feet away from his hens. Tussled with the fox from the coop all the way down to the road, distracting it from his hens, then hid under a passing car until we could rescue him. Miss that guy.

But it is important that the hen to rooster ratio is right, or they get competitive and mean.

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cmrdporcupineOP5y ago

I should also mention another neat role roosters have: they mediate conflict. We got a rooster because our hens were picking on each other. That stopped once we got him. He even used to sit between the conflicting hens on the perch at night.

Also a good rooster will find food for the hens, and call them over to it. Ours used to find bugs and then make this cute "coo coo coo" and they'd come running, and eat while he watched and waited to take his turn.

sniff miss our guy. I think we'll get a new rooster in the spring, maybe a really neat looking bantam.

stickfigure5y ago

Oh, I definitely love having roosters! The crowing makes me happy. But our polish started mounting the most developed hens at 19 weeks, and the other two (silkies, believe it or not) wanted in on the action less than a month later. Too many roosters for the number of hens, and the girls were getting frazzled.

The thing I'm hoping for out of this "no kill" technology is the ability to buy sexed fertile eggs at the ag store. I don't have a problem culling roosters from unsexed breeds, but it would be nice to bypass raising them from chicks and guessing which ones will turn out to be keepers.

cmrdporcupineOP5y ago

Can I ask what method you use to cull? I originally got the birds for myself and my daughter to take care of but my wife fell in love with them and she treats them like babies, which is fine, but even when we've had very sick hens killing ourselves has been off the table and we've ended up paying vets big fees to take care of it. She wants more birds in the spring but I'm not going to go along with that unless this becomes a more serious 'farmy' type situation and we become more self-sufficient with the animal care.

I grew up rural and have dispatched my share of animals hung around on my grandpa's farm during meat bird processing, so I'm not squeamish. But I need a good humane way to do this that won't upset my wife and kids.

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cmrdporcupineOP5y ago

Also, what's to stop us from breeding fat and delicious roosters? It's amazing what selective breeding can accomplish in a few generations, especially with marker assisted selection. Evolution has its own traits "it" has selected for in roosters, but we could easily have our own.

LurkerAtTheGate5y ago

Fat & delicious roosters are called 'capons' - they're neutered & raised for meat, though a bit of a luxury food.

Shebanator5y ago

Hiding under a passing car sounds rather dangerous. Did you mean parked? :-)

cmrdporcupineOP5y ago

The car was passing but it was this nice couple that slowed down and pulled over when they saw the fox taking bites out of our bird. Jacques took that opportunity to hide under their car. We were frantically hunting for our scattered hens when they came up the driveway asking if we were missing a bird.

We kept the poor guy going for a few weeks on antibiotics until he succumbed. Turns out foxes carry lethal bacteria in their mouths. They can bite things without finishing them off, and then come back later and find the animal again after it succumbs to infection. :-(

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0 pointscmrdporcupine5y ago0 comments

Re: birds and rape, wait til you see ducks...

But it is important that the hen to rooster ratio is right, or they get competitive and mean.

0 comments

cmrdporcupineOP5y ago

sniff miss our guy. I think we'll get a new rooster in the spring, maybe a really neat looking bantam.

stickfigure5y ago

cmrdporcupineOP5y ago

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cmrdporcupineOP5y ago

LurkerAtTheGate5y ago

Fat & delicious roosters are called 'capons' - they're neutered & raised for meat, though a bit of a luxury food.

Shebanator5y ago

Hiding under a passing car sounds rather dangerous. Did you mean parked? :-)

cmrdporcupineOP5y ago

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