Advice for Living with an Aggressive Rooster
1. Don't!
Actually, that's not quite true. There are many reasons why you might choose to live with an aggressive rooster. Here are ours:
1. We didn't know what we were doing when we raised him, and are now responsible for the way he turned out.
2. He does a great job of taking care of our free-range hens.
3. It's kind of sweet the way he calls the hens over when he finds special foods instead of eating them himself.
4. There are ways to live with an aggressive rooster without getting hurt. After four years with a rooster, here is my advice:
- Use a spray bottle to help control the rooster's behavior. This is especially useful if he's gotten into a part of the yard you normally reserve for yourself.
- Use fencing to separate the rooster from the part of the yard you use the most.
- Use rope (or twine or wire -- whatever's handy) to open and close the coop door without having to come face to face with the rooster.
- You might also choose to block off a separate section of your yard with a flap. For example, we can block the rooster in his coop, in the chicken yard (by putting a flap down on the tunnel between the chicken yard and the "free-range" yard (ie our acreage)), or we can block him out of the tunnel, so he has to stay in the free-range yard and we can pass through the chicken yard. This is helpful since it is our main access for the garden.
Let me just remind you that life with twenty animals can be amazing, but it certainly has its challenges. Our rooster, Eagle (named at 3 days old when we still thought he was the hen we'd ordered but when we noticed a certain chill in his eyes!) has definitely been a source of challenge. But, I also credit him with protecting our little flock from the predators around us ... stray dogs, coyotes, foxes, opossum, raccoons, hawks, owls, etc. Knock on wood, but with him in charge, we have not lost any chickens to predators.
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