[locpic]

I am curious about the amount of roosters that display courtship behavior. So my question is do your roosters put on courtship displays for the ladies before mating, or are they rooster rapists? I have three rooster and they are all unfortunately rapists.

 

[KSALguy]

not all roosters are gentlemen but they will all generally do a dance and display given the chance, lots of factors, basically they are all opprotunistic to some degree,

 

[locpic]

Thanks for the reply. I have a friend who has ten rooster covering about one hundred and twenty hens and the only one that dances and wing dips is a Rhode island red panty.

 

[locpic]

Oops that's banty.

 

[KSALguy]

the problem is especially if the roosters are young they get a mob mentality, they are like a bunch of teenage boys at gym class, older mature roosters in a flock even together are not normally as bad, given enough room to separate they will devide up territories and the hens will choose who they want to follow, some rape still happens but thats normal in chicken society apparently

 

[aart]

Not sure the term 'rape' can be applied to chickens without a huge dose of anthropomorphism for I don't know that they possess the cognitive capacity to consent or not. I do know that if there is a low ratio of cocks to hens that the competition has the cocks behaving with much more aggression in their mating behaviors.

 

[barnbilder]

Typically in a flock there would be a rooster that establishes dominance, and do the courtship dance, call hens over to food, etc.,and the subdominant males will become sneak attack artists if they are allowed to do anything at all. Sounds like you have a bunch of young birds that have skipped the figuring out who is boss part, and fast forwarded straight to the breeding part. It appears to be instinct for young roosters to try to work fast so that they can get out before the dominant rooster shows up. While the use of certain terms tends to anthropomorphize chickens a bit too much, the analogy of a bunch of boys in gym class is not far off. They need a boss, and if they are too similar in size and age, they may never figure out who that is.