I’m down to two hens in the Fortress of Attitude. This time there was blood.
It’s always the same pattern; all the hens but one get along fine with Seymour. But the smallest becomes terrified of him. He starts persecuting her every time she comes out. She starts breaking cover and flying in my face every time I come into her yard, like she’s begging to be saved.
It’s happened three times now. The first time I let it go, and ended up with a casualty. These past two incidents, which have happened in rapid succession, I fixed the problem by moving the victim back to the main flock.
I’m detecting a common thread running through these incidents. Its name is Seymour.
(sigh) And I said such nice things about him.
The way I see it I have two options: At his age he’d probably make an acceptable roaster, that’s option one. Option two…
Option two is to move HIM to the main flock. Maybe everybody else, too. I’ve always had more behavior problems here at the Fortress than at the Big Chickenhouse. Maybe Seymour isn’t the real problem, maybe I need to just accept that it’s too small and cramped, and that it will always drive chickens crazy.
Good luck Joel, I’ve never been one to delve too deeply into the world of chicken social (or lack thereof) interactions.
You can take this with a grain of salt but I have been keeping chickens for quite some time,and we were raised with always having chickens. Roosters are a pain in the ass,and unless you are wanting chicks not worth the trouble. That being said,I have found if you want a rooster you need no less than 10 to12 hens so he can do what he needs to do without tortureing 2or3 hens.
Spring is apparently here, which means my roosters are killing each other wholesale. Last night I went out on the porch in the dark, and stepped on a rooster corpse that I figure was about four days old from the smell. My dogs kindly bring the dead bodies up out of the woods for me.
I need to turn on the porch light and wear flip flops when I go out there till is over……
Let’s see . . . without a rooster the hens go nutz and pick on each other. Add a rooster and the hens shape up but the rooster goes psycho on them. That about it?
Man, if it weren’t for the “free” eggs . . .
Maybe separate pens for each hen?
I’m in agreement with Klaus about the rooster and 3 or 4 hens. It don’t work. My 3 to 4 hens were in a pen that was 6′ by 12′ by 3′. So long as there was no rooster the hens didn’t seem to have any problems. Add a rooster and their back were all tore-up and they were nervous as hell. The only down side of no rooster is one hen will stop laying and take of the role of the rooster as the sentry. But 2 -3 eggs a day was plenty fine with us.
Judy, my problem is that the hens were nervous wrecks *before* I (accidentally) got them a rooster. But then things smoothed out for a while. Now the hens are going to pieces one at a time.
When we had a rooster in the Big Chickenhouse with over a dozen hens, there was no problem. I starting to wonder if I shouldn’t just move everybody over there.
Could be the answer (everybody at Landlady’s). You have to go over there everyday to feed-n-water and gather eggs anyway. Next question do the hens have enough room to get away from the rooster if they don’t want his attention?
There’s a lot more room there than here.