can you disarm a rooster?

[mopinko]

i am thinking of having one clutch of chicks. thinking that i can get out my dremel and dull up his nails and beak. but wonder if people take permanent measures to keep peace in the barn yard.

also, how many chicks is a normal clutch?

[HereSince1628]

1. Yes. WARNING GRAPHIC EXAMPLE!!!!!!

[mopinko]

2. yeah, i figured as much.

tho i don't understand why you would go that far and not take the bone.

can anybody tell me at what age spurs appear?

[LWolf]

3. I don't know.

Any rooster I've ever had that got aggressive went into the pot. I'm currently on my 3rd generation of roosters that don't bother anyone.

Edited to add: I've had hens set clutches as small as 3, and as large as 24. It's rare for all the eggs to hatch. The biggest clutch ever hatched for me was 14, out of the 24.

[hedgehog]

4. I wouldn't bother - in 25 some years of keeping chickens,

we've only had one bad rooster.

[bvar22]

5. Plymouth Rock Roosters (Barred Rocks) don't have spurs,

....and a non-aggressive nature.
The Plymouth Rock family of chickens are "spurless".

We've been keeping chickens for 6 years, and just found that out because we have a 1 year old Barred Rock Rooster that hasn't developed spurs,
so we looked it up.
No Spurs.

We've had some beautiful but mean Roosters in the past,
and learned not to turn our backs on them,
but our new Barred Rock Rooster (Rocky) is great.
He still watches out over the hens, but has never made an aggressive move toward us.

[HealUS]

13. Awesome!

I don't have poultry yet, but am hoping to begin this spring
and really appreciate getting to learn from you guys!

This is really helpful.
Thanks much!

[bvar22]

14. Unfortunately, "Rocky" met an untimely death in the mouth of a dog...

..because he didn't have spurs.
He was still bold enough to confront the dog to protect his hens,
but didn't have the necessary weapons to teach that dog a lesson.

We have a dilemma.
On one hand, we live very rural adjacent to a National Forest.
There are plenty of predators, and a good "cocky" rooster will protect his hens from predators. Unfortunately, a good rooster will see YOU as something to keep away from "his" hens.

It is not possible to teach him a lesson like a dog or other pet.
A Rooster WILL fight you to the death, and even if you are successful in swatting him down, he WILL be waiting for the next time.
THAT is what they do.

Be careful.
A good rooster can put you in the ER if you drop your guard or turn your back.
They are amazingly fast, strong, deceptive, fearless.....and beautiful.
They can sink a 3" spur deep into your leg before you know what has happened,
and those spurs are covered with chicken s**t.
but they do a good job protecting the flock.

We raised our roosters from 1 day old chicks,
and they were docile lap pets for a while.
Then, one day, they start crowing, and everything changed.
They are the pimp daddy of the yard, and all the girls belong to him.

[HealUS]

15. "Just A Love Machine"

Hey there, BVAR22

Speaking of "Ruling the Roost" - I thought you'd get a kick out of this:

It's an old Denny's Commercial. Enjoy!

[HealUS]

16. Insensitive?

Was that last post insensitive of me?! I'm sorry about your Rocky loss! )

[bvar22]

18. Hi, HealUS.

Nothing insensitive.
I have been unable to play the video due to power outages caused by the ice storm
across Arkansas. We live very rural, and are the last people get power back when these things happen.


I'll watch the video as soon as possible.

Welcome to DU, and Rural/Farm.
This used to be a very active forum on DU,
but everybody left.

--Bob
Ouachita Mountains, Arkansas

[mopinko]

17. sorry to hear that bvar.

this is similar to the decision about wing clipping. i never clipped my parrot, because i have dogs. terriers even. they know the birds are mine, but they have taken chicks before.
unfortunately the risk that you take came home to haunt me, also, as kaya chewed through a screen and flew away.
i probably would have gotten her back, and she would fly to me. (something a flightless bird cannot learn) but she picked a cold and windy day to fly away. i saw her the next day, then lost her.

i have a sweet boy now, but you are right, he crows at me, and watches his girls. he is just sprouting spurs, and i am thinking about his issue a lot.

[LWolf]

6. I have a broody hen that has hatched several clutches.

In some years, I had 2 hens, and 2 clutches.

The rooster never bothered them. She was not separated from the flock; made her nest in the coop, sat, and brought them out as soon as they hatched. The rest of the flock ignored them, and mama watched carefully.

When the chicks were fully feathered out, at 3-4 weeks, mom ignored them, and the rest of the flock made sure they didn't eat first or get the best spots on the roost, but they were still part of the flock.

Size? The smallest was 3 chicks out of 4 eggs; I've never seen all the eggs hatch. The largest was 10 out of 16.

In all cases, the other hens would lay near the broody hen and she would roll their eggs into her nest. In the case of the smallest clutch, they offered more eggs to the senior hen. In the case of the larger, she had trouble spreading her feathers over that large a clutch, but wouldn't give them up. I thought 10 was pretty impressive.

I've always figured that one reason the whole clutch didn't hatch was because some of those eggs were late comers, and a few hours after hatch started, she quit setting.

[womanofthehills]

7. My rooster is mean and huge

But I want him that way to protect the chickens. He's a Buff Orpington - twice as big as the chickens. I would never turn my back on him. He doesn't use his spurs which are huge - he just pecks. I had a black Australorp rooster that would attack with his spurs, while the Buff Orpington never uses his spurs. My sweetest and prettiest chickens are the Buff Brahmas - I love the feathers on their feet.

[FedUpWithIt All]

8. You can keep many roosters in line if you behave as an alpha.

From a pretty young age, we used to make our roo move out of the way for us (the kids included), i would occasionally make a point to walk where he was several times in a day (Walking calmly but deliberately as if i were heading somewhere and he was simply in my way) to make him move out of my way, i would prevent him (or any roo) from eating first when i put out treats, i would pick him up and run my finger over his comb (he detested this but tolerated it) and gently push his beak down into a submissive posture and i would not let him mate with a hen or crow dominance in my immediate presence.

Our main roo was a big boy and quite polite and generally kept the other roos in line. He was a Buckeye and they are generally agreeable in my experience. There is definitely an awful lot to be said for breed traits and individual personality with roosters. An overly aggressive roo can be a real problem.

We had one broody episode and she set on four eggs and hatched out three. We tried adding two day old chicks the first day but she rejected them. She was a great mother but we did keep her and the chicks separated from the flock.

[mopinko]

9. thought i would update this-

i ended up with 2 roos out of a dozen chicks. easter eggers. they are the prettiest things i ever saw. they are not that noisy, unless there are strangers about, or me, for whom they crow like mad. they don't have much in the way of spurs, which i would have expected by now (born in april). they aren't mean at all, just skittish.

right now they are in bachelor jail, in a dog crate in the basement, while the hens get their feathers back. they kinda need those for february in chicago.
we intend to raise some chicks, and are looking at playing around a little with breeding for color. i have 2 red hens and a duckwing type with a black head. the roos are alike but not identical. being a muttly breed, i am sure there are some colors hiding in there.
sorry to say, tho, that after they donate their dna, they will be chicken and dumplings. breeding our own chicks, we will have more roos coming.

some nice new pics of the hens here-
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.417550171600001.91989.410796658942019&type=3

[FedUpWithIt All]

10. We used a homemade fleece chicken apron/saddle when our hen's backs went bare.

It worked very well. It also entertained company to see hens happily running around with rainbow stripes on their backs The only hens that we had trouble with were the buff orps. Their feathers seemed more delicate and they were ALWAYS the boys favorites.

The fleece would be the typical apron shape but had a slit cut for each wing and the tail. It was a great material because it has some flexibility but still retains shape. The roos could mount the girls and their backs were protected and their feathers returned. It will also keep your unfeathered birds warm until they come in.

Ours was cut very similar to the style at the following link.

http://www.oldnicholsfarm.com/2009/12/saddle-up_09.html

[mopinko]

11. my buffs are the faves, too.

i just figure when it gets that far, thd girls deserve a break. we shall see what happens when we start working on chicks. the feed store i go to has cute swade ones.
they really keep them on tho? my first reaction was that it would be like keeping a toddlers shoes on.

[FedUpWithIt All]

12. Mine were totally fine with them

And they stayed on for months (we would take them off on occasion to let their skin breathe and clean them. Of course i could only speak to the fleece, three hole ones.

Several of the other kinds have straps with snaps and no tail attachment which honestly looked uncomfortable to me. The fleece sort of loosens around their wings as they move but it looked like the straps of the other types would not do that. The other concern i had was that the lack of a tail strap would cause the apron/saddle to move around too much on the backs putting more stress on their wings.

The ones we made did not move around at all but the material was flexible enough that the bird could slip out of it if the material were grabbed and held by something or someone. The birds wearing, and the birds interacting with them, paid the bright material no mind.


When are you planning to start breeding? I was looking at incubator plans myself last night. We are birdless at the moment and are getting ready for spring.

Edited to add...most of the feather will NOT grow back until the bird goes into a natural molt and drops the feather quills. Our own birds were bare for quite a long time.

[fasttense]

19. Yes we tried those too

It was the funniest thing in the world to watch the hens try and get them off. Every single hen from buff Orpington to Rhode Island Reds managed to squirm out of them by the next day.

We decided to just keep the number of roosters down to an absolute minimum (one rooster to 20 hens) instead of trying to put saddles on our bare backed chickens.

I always keep at least on rooster with the hens. It's how nature intended it. Only a few got brave enough to attack people and they went into the pot. For the most part, our roosters leave us alone and we leave them alone, as long as they are not sick. I've never trimmed their beaks or their spurs. Since I've kept the roosters down to very few, we have had no problems with bareback chickens anymore.

[FedUpWithIt All]

20. That's interesting. Ours never even tried to remove them.

We had a single roo and 4 hens when we were struggling with bare backs.

[womanofthehills]

21. I bought some saddles with sunflowers embroidered on them

My chickens looked very stylish!