Managing the boys
Written by Sue Clarke. Provided by New Zealand Lifestyle Block, incorporating Growing Today, magazine December 2010 issue.
A group of males of any species is always a problem, but especially when they are sexually mature livestock such as bulls, rams, bucks or roosters.
Sometimes it is necessary to keep groups of roosters. You may need to keep them segregated if they are not currently needed for breeding, because you want to fatten surplus roosters, or because bringing together groups of breeders makes for easier management during winter.
The problem with males is they fight to try and gain supremacy, and play fight just because they can. Often the gang will pick on the smallest or less mature or a rooster of a different type and hound him until he eventually dies through starvation or from being pecked to death.
Roosters show no mercy to each other and are always looking for an opportunity to pick on a rooster of lower status. If there are a few hens in the mix they may well be picked on as well and forced to mate until they too die. It can be a very violent world in the hen house.
These are a few tips that might be helpful when trying to manage a bachelor group of roosters.
1. Some breeds like fighting
Some breeds are more prone to fighting than others. The large, heavy breeds like Orpingtons tend to be fairly easy going, whereas breeds like Leghorns and the birds bred specially for fighting, like the Old English Game, may never be suitable to keep together in a group. The particularly aggressive roosters may have to be caged or penned individually if you need to keep them separate from their hens.
2. Birds of a feather get along better
Roosters which are the same age, colour and size have more chance of living peaceably together than a mixed group. If you are fattening a bunch of roosters from day old to maturity, keep them as a group and try to fatten them to oven-ready stage before they are fully mature sexually. You may still get some fighting towards the end, around the 16-20 week mark, if you need to keep them that long, so be ready to remove a bullied rooster quickly.
3. Segregate
Try to keep a group of roosters out of the sight of other birds, especially the hens, if they are sexually mature roosters. Make sure they have a large area to roam around in, provide lots of perches, and ground level shelter with branches and boards etc so the lower ranked males can get out of the way of their brothers.
4. Feeding spaces
Ensure there is plenty of feed space per bird, at least 10cm/bird if you are feeding out in a trough. Sometimes it is better to feed out pellets that they can eat quickly, and then quickly move away from each other. Other times, providing you can spread it widely, give them food which occupies them for longer such as cabbage or silverbeet. Better still, a range with good grass helps to occupy the day as well.
5. Roosters for meat should do very little
Roosters being fattened are best kept confined to a small area and given ad lib feed. In this case you will probably need to keep them in a shed or other area with limited light. If there is a window, hang a sack over it.
However, if you prefer a gamier taste to your meat, a bird that moves around more and lives longer will develop more flavour.
6. Roosters for breeding
A mature breeding rooster that is not needed in the breeding pen should be either kept in its own individual cage or a small compatible group of similar-sized roosters. If you do get them in a group, you need to watch them carefully when you first put them together and remove any trouble-makers to single cell accommodation.
7. Spare roosters
Sometimes you may have a team of roosters which you alternate between your hens. If so, the spares areprobably better off in single accommodation while they regain their strength for the next mating session, unless the spares are of compatible size and temperament, otherwise they may just practice riding each other until the loser gets killed.
8. Match up at moulting time
Put the groups of roosters from the breeding pens together when the breeding season is over in late autumn at the start of the moult. That way their reproductive system will not be as fully charged and the testosterone levels lower. Match them up for size and temperament, and if possible put them all together in a pen which is new to all of them, preferably in the evening or at night, and keep the place a bit dark for a few days until they figure each other out.
9. The hen-to-rooster ratio
The ratio of hens to one rooster is fairly critical as too many roosters and too few hens will instigate fighting, and you may well end up with infertile roosters because of the bullying. A heavy breed rooster can easily manage 8-10 hens, and a light breed rooster can cope with 10-15 hens.
10. Roosters and fertility
If you have two roosters and only six hens there is bound to be fighting and/or mating interference so that at times some of the hens will not be laying fertile eggs, despite the choice. Get rid of the lowly ranked boy or the persistent fighter.
If your flock is around 20 hens with two roosters where one is much younger than the other, then the same infertility might occur as the older rooster may fight off the younger one, but not manage to cover the 20 hens on his own.
I have managed large meat breeder flocks of 5000 hens running together with between 500 and 600 large (5kg+) roosters and still maintained a fertility of more than 95% over all the eggs being laid, but it required constant vigilance to manage the males, to ensure they were getting enough to eat, removing the pale-faced and non-working males and replacing them with vigorous, virile boys (which have been kept in a bachelor group). This wakes up the ideas of the old fellows taking life a bit easy and excites the hens to go and find a new suitor!
Reader questions
Re-introductions
I love your articles and I have a "hen" problem that you may be able to help me with. Our bottom-of-the-pecking-order hen went clucky and despite our best efforts we weren't able to persuade her not to sit on a nest all day. In the end we built her a special little coop and gave her five eggs to hatch. She did a wonderful job and apart from one dead at hatching, we now have four extra hens to introduce to the flock. Our mother hen is a fantastic, attentive mother and she always takes them to bed in the little coop (which is getting a tad too small). We've let the older hens and rooster free-range with the new ones and their mother but there's a stand-up fight if their encounter is too close. Our problem is, how do we reintroduce the mum and her new hens to the original flock?
– Wendy Parker, Pahiatua
Lifestyle Block poultry expert Sue Clarke replies:
I would just leave the coop open, let Mum and chicks out with the others, and let them choose to go home to bed there. Soon enough, Mum will have had enough of the chicks and will go off and roost on her own or with the other adults. This usually happens when the chicks are about 8-10 weeks.
Usually, teenage chicks slot in at the bottom of the pecking order and the others are not too mean, they just give them a reprimanding peck now and again. You will need to ensure they get their own feed away from the adults.
It doesn't matter if where the young ones sleep is a bit small as it will help to keep them warm when Mum decides to leave, which she will, so long as they can get out and away during the day.
The fights between Mum and the others won't last forever either. As long as she doesn't get damaged inthe process, she will eventually slot back in, above her chicks but below the others.
This article was provided by NZ Lifestyle Block, incorporating Growing Today magazine.
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