I make mistakes. A lot of them.
Sometimes I wear a brown belt with black shoes and don’t even notice.
Last week I went to a dentist appointment and didn’t notice I had duck poo smeared on my boots until I propped them up on the end of the long, vinyl dental chair. Truth.
Please hop over to SoulyRested.com for all the details on the huge mistake I made with my rooster. Unfortunately, you’ve reached this post on an old, inactive site. But the full scoop is just a click away, either read the post by clicking here, or just click any image on this page.
souly rested 
Wow, I’ve had chickens for many years now, and have never heard of that happening before. Yikes! Thank you for sharing. I know it’s painful to put this stuff out there sometimes, but so important that we all get to learn from each other and reassure ourselves that we’re all human
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I have to admit, it did help me forgive myself for letting this happen under my watch when so many homesteaders said the same thing you’re saying… so many who owned chicken for decades and never owned a rooster who would have done this. But now I’ve learned, and hopefully through this post, I can help a few other newbie homesteaders learn a little too. Thanks, Carrissa.
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I’m new to this whole chicken farming, my hens are not old enough to lay yet, but when they do can you eat an egg that has been fertiled
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Thanks for sharing such a humbling experience. Wishing you better luck with your new rooster.
Pam
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Thank you for sharing. I’m so sorry about your terrible experience. I’m new to chicken keeping. Much to my surprise, one of the hens we bought as a chick in the spring started sitting on eggs and hatched her own chick last week. I’m keeping her safely away from the other chickens while her baby is so tiny. Thanks to your post, I will be very careful about when I let the other chickens interact with her baby. We have 3 roosters (one looks just like Mr. Big Fat). Two of them do the dance for their ladies, but one does not. I don’t think I can trust those guys.
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I’m so glad you happened upon my post too, janna! That sweet baby chick is probably ADORABLE and I hope this info keeps it safe, especially from that Roo who knows nothing about politely courting a girl. 😉 If you get a chance, visit my fb page and share a pic of your baby chick… I adore the sweet little fluffy things and it’s the absolute sweetest thing on a farm to watch the momma hen keep her babies under her wings.
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I’m so glad I stumbled on this post! I think, I too, have an abnormal rooster! He is very aggressive with my hens… none of them have feathers on their backs due to his aggressive mating. He is also very very aggressive to people. I’ve considered making roo stew with him but I’m concerned about who will protect my girls if he’s not around. After reading your post and reading about normal rooster mating behavior I think I might need to get a new rooster! Thanks for the information!
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It’s a hard balance; keeping roosters for protection of the hens yet not letting them harm the hens themselves… Our younger roosters are just now getting mature enough to take over as the head rooster, so we’re trying to decide which one to keep, trying to gauge which one will be the kindest to the ladies yet bold enough to protect them. Thankfully, none of our current roosters are ever aggressive towards people. That simply would not be tolerated around here. But, just fyi, it’s not at all uncommon for hens to loose back feathers from the mating process. I’m pretty sure roosters always have “favorites,” and those poor hens are often missing feathers, but do make sure you have enough hens per rooster, that helps a lot with that problem. (And I’m glad you stumbled upon my post too. 🙂 )
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So far I have never seen our Rooster attempting to mate with a young chick. But a great thing to keep an eye on because we tend to replace our Rooster every year. This last year we had a Rooster who was very aggressive when he was mating. He was the inferior male and had a difficult time mating before the dominant rooster would come and chase him away. So the inferior rooster would forget about the dance and just get it done as quick as he could, which meant he was a lot rougher with the hens.
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That’s a very interesting thought that inferior males will forego the dance and be rougher on the hens. That wasn’t the problem with Mr. Big Fat, since he had always been the only male since birth, but a good thing for me to consider now as we are in the midst of deciding which of our young roosters we will keep. Thanks Miranda!
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Thank you for sharing the simple honest, I have a roster who started out like your Big Fat and one of my older hens took in on herself to correct him. It was so funny watching her stalk him and pouncing when he tried to take unwelcome libertys 🙂 Now I’m realizing how lucky I was. When I chatted about it on another page to see if this is normal and because it was quite a comedy to see, I was made to feel it was wrong to bring up
but I’m new to all this and often surprised by these fantastic animals. Thank you so much for your openness, I will definitely be more careful in the future.
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I’m so thankful that my mistakes were at least not wasted, Julie, and I am helping others who now know to watch for this problem. I still, many months later, really miss my beautiful young hens–and to think they’d be about ready to provide us with wonderful gifts of daily eggs. But you are welcome; and thank YOU for letting me know that my willingness to share my heart-breaking failures is helping others. 🙂
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I feel your loss, and I should have said. Many of our plants are named after our sweet girls that didn’t make it 😦 I put them under plants when I can. 🐓💕 I’m sorry
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I never knew animals misbehave I always thought roosters and other male animals and the like wouldn’t be aroused (I am not sure if it’s the correct word to say) by little ones…that is totally new to me and thank God I knew about this earlier as for now I am preparing my poultry project. cheers!!
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I had a rooster who had the same issues. He scalped two of my young hens, before I realized what was going on. When I put the young hens in the yard in a cage to separate them, he tried to pull them through the cage!!! He also did not dance for the hens, and pulled the skin off of a couple of my adult hens. So, into the stew pot he went. I learned that courting and dancing before mating are things that often are neglected when selecting breeding stock, to the point that some people even make these aprons for the hens so they can protect their feathers. I will NEVER keep a rooster that traumatizes the hens!!! One of the number one jobs of any one who keeps animals is to keep stress to a minimum. My girls work hard for me and the least I can do for them is to make sure that they have a gentleman for a rooster! !!
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Not allowed to have roosters in my city, but before I got rid of mine, he was absolutely fascinated by my banty hen, to the point she would hide between two big hens or run to me for protection.
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It’s amazing isn’t it how much personality both the roosters and the hens really do have? I have a few hens who stand up to and deny the roosters, to the point that I’m pretty sure their eggs must be infertile. And then I too have timid hens who continually submit without a fight or who stay away from the roo and run for protection if he gets near them. But I’m sorry you aren’t permitted to have roosters in your city. Even after all the trouble that Big Fat gave me, I would sincerely miss having a rooster around.
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I learned this the hard way as well this year, though what is weird is they where all the same age and raised together. My hens where dieing, I thought to a predator, and I had two roosters. I figured it out when i went out one day and watched them. One roo was gentle, dance etc. The other would down right run up and rape, injuring or killing the hen. He was culled. (This was a Delaware)
I have also had one very aggressive to humans but very good to his hens.(RIR/Americana mix) I kept him around only for that reason. His hens where never killed by anything and him and I eventually had an understanding. But strangers, mail man, UPS guy…… No. He was a better guard than the dogs. A shovel was left for the UPS guy. Sunny had a great life. Died of old age I think. He lived 8yrs.
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