I’ve only been poultry-fied for five years. In those five years, I’ve learned lots of things the hard way. The first chicks were handled several times a day. They would jump into my hand to eat and they were not afraid. When they went outdoors to live and we determined males from females, we penned the roosters. Those roosters were little terrors! “Eagle” was a beautiful Ameracauna and our son named him. He looked like a little eagle when he was a chick. Another one was similar, so he was Eagle Wannabe. We also had at least 5 or 6 bantam cochins and a few rir. All were bantams. I think out of the whole batch of 25, 17 were roosters! That is why we made separate pens and kept most penned up…….there were just too many for the girls to have to fend off.
I went into the pen with the cochins and rir roos to get their water dish and they tag teamed ……I had
I got rid of them that week! The Hispanic guys working on our garage were happy to take them. I had a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with them.
So, the next batch of chickens didn’t get handled a lot……..a little while teeny tiny, but once the rooster traits showed, it was hands off.
To this day, most of our roosters are ok. Some get a little cocky, but mostly they retreat. The NN/Silkie is in a tractor with another rooster and two hens. He is a devil to people, but loves his women! He is striking in appearance and I haven’t had the heart to get rid of him…..especially since I am trying to get some chicks out of him. So far, only Barty’s chicks have made it. Barty and Splash make beautiful blue babies.
Our Gold Laced Polish, Grizwald, is bi-polar and somedays he seems so normal and other days he is kamikaze roo! I corner and catch and carry him around like a baby. I don’t like to carry them upside down by their legs………except for the
Laura
Laura Roberts
R Half Pint Farm
From:
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 3:36 PM
To:
Subject: [CHICKENS-101] Roosters 101
With all the talk about bad behaving roosters it got me thinking. I've had good behaving roosters and I've had some pretty bad ones. Sometimes I do believe breed plays a role but so does how we handle them. The whole nature vs nurture argument.
So if those who've had a lot of roosters or years of having roosters could give some tips about raising them right in the first place maybe that could help.
I finally have some decent behaving roos this year. Well all except the
With my other roos I raised them without giving them a lot of attention. I didn't ignore them but I didn't play with them either. I had tried the 2 extremes before per others advise and found myself being flogged as soon as they hit sexual maturity.
So far this year (knock on wood) it is peaceful in the barnyard. The sumatra roo does a little dance and then attacks. So I have some warning. I'd like to raise my next sumatra roo to ignore me. I don't need to have him eat out of my hand just not attack anyone who comes near.
So anyone with roo raising advice fire away. It could be a benefit to us all. With so many of us on here I'm sure someone can come up with something that the rest of us hadn't thought of yet.
Thank you
Marla
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
CHICKENS-101@yahoogroups.com
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