When to harvest a young rooster?

[FarmerKat]

I have a 3 months old Dominique rooster. He just started crowing today. He is one of the baby chicks I got in summer when he was 1 week old. We have an older rooster that we want to keep. I do not want to get to the point that the little guy gets beaten up by the older rooster but at this point, he does not have much meat on him either. How long can the roosters co-exist without bloodshed?

There has not been any aggression between the two, but when the little guy started crowing, our older rooster was looking for the sound and was crowing very loudly. Our older rooster is about 7 months old and this was the first time I heard him crow other than his morning call.

[barnbilder]

Chances are they will work it out. Especially if their is any appreciable size difference. Just keep an eye on them, sometimes the younger smaller one will be forced into seclusion, and might not be allowed to eat with everyone else. Beginning to crow won't be as much of a threat as trying to make advances toward hens, and at 3 months old, the hens are more likely to deal with that than the other rooster. 7 months is not really that old either, he is just now coming into maturity. The real problem is when you have two that are older and evenly matched, they can do a lot of damage before figuring out who is the boss. One more thing, a Dominique will probably need to be at least 4 months old to have a decent carcass.

[FarmerKat]

Originally Posted by barnbilder

Chances are they will work it out. Especially if their is any appreciable size difference. Just keep an eye on them, sometimes the younger smaller one will be forced into seclusion, and might not be allowed to eat with everyone else. Beginning to crow won't be as much of a threat as trying to make advances toward hens, and at 3 months old, the hens are more likely to deal with that than the other rooster. 7 months is not really that old either, he is just now coming into maturity. The real problem is when you have two that are older and evenly matched, they can do a lot of damage before figuring out who is the boss. One more thing, a Dominique will probably need to be at least 4 months old to have a decent carcass.

Thank you, that was helpful. There is a huge size difference between the roosters. The other rooster is mix but looks like a Buff Orpington (mom was a BO but they were not sure who the father was). So even as adults, he would be naturally larger than a Dominique roo. Hopefully they will get along fine for some time.

[Bret]

When he starts acting all cocky.

I had two that got along OK and at opposite ends of a roost. Old age and what I suspect was a varmint did in the Sr. They were barnyard roosters that had space.

[HappyFarminMama]

I currently have 5 roosters & they all get along great. Your roos are young, so it may be that they will have the pecking order figured out & not really squabble a whole lot by the time they're mature, so you may (if you want) be able to keep both. I like having more than 1 roo, more protection. I believe the key is adequate space & hen:roo ratio (usually 8-10 hens per roo, depending on temperament). We process our roos at 16-20 weeks, depending on size, but we've never had that breed before, I don't know how they grow. Good luck!

[Lady89]

2 roosters can work if both have their own space, it will work best if you free rang your birds, but at the very least you will need a feeder and water dish for each, and if you do not free range a large enough coop that they can get away from each other.

[Daybright]

We had 3 roosters for a while with our flock of 17 hens. They were all the same age. Rooster #1 is the boss. Rooster #2 got along pretty well with #1 -- he was allowed to be near #1, share food, etc. He rarely crowed, and I'm not sure he really did much with the ladies. We had to eat him because he turned human-aggressive. Rooster #3 is smaller and more skittish. He is not allowed near #1. He seems to do OK, though he gets chased sometimes. We still have these two roosters. We've always had just one waterer and either one or two feeders. During the day, the chickens are let out into a fenced run, and at night, they share one coop. Interestingly, we recently hatched a batch of 7 chicks from home-bred eggs, and #3 appears to be the father of 3-5 of the chicks, so he is getting some action.

[aart]

Had an adult rooster and a cockerel last winter, they got along fine but the cockerel started really harassing the hens bad when he hit about 6 months old and the adult roo did nothing to school him....I segregated the cockerel and stewed him early this spring.

I had 3 cockerels this spring, the oldest was the keeper and a few weeks older than the other 2.
All was well until one of the youngers started crowing, the the boss started being really rough on the pullets. I removed the youngers within a day and the boss settled down immediately. Rehomed one and grilled the other at about 16 weeks, he was delicious.

My flocks are totally confined, so that can make a difference. I think every situation is different but it's always good to have 1 or 2 separate enclosures ready in case you need to segregate....if it needs to happen it usually needs to happen like right now. I built the coop with partitioned off space and was really glad I did. Used XL wire dog crates at times too.

[FarmerKat]

Thanks, everyone, for sharing your experience. My plan is to keep only 1 rooster and we like the older roo we have. But I am hoping the younger one will grow bigger before we have him for dinner.