Having a Mean Rooster? Learn How to Tame an Aggressive Rooster

Have you noticed a streak of aggressive behavior in your roosters? Or having a mean rooster in your flock? Wondering what is causing it? Well, we are going to be answering absolutely every single question that you may have on this page. Well, we hope we are going to. There is a lot to know about the aggressive rooster behavior, and much of it is a ‘learn on the job’ sort-of thing!

Let’s dive in, shall we?

Are all Roosters Mean?

Not all roosters are mean. It is very much going to be dependent on the breed and the overall personality of your rooster.

Most people will never encounter an aggressive rooster, while some will have all of their roosters have a touch of aggressiveness towards them.

If you want to avoid aggressive roosters, then we suggest that you do a bit of research into the various chicken breeds out there, since there are many aggressive chicken breeds.

This should give you a rough idea about which roosters are likely to be aggressive and which ones will be calm the vast majority of the time.

What Makes Roosters Aggressive?

As we said, the breed of the rooster is going to be playing a major role in whether a rooster is aggressive or not. However, this is not going to be the only reason. So, let’s see what could be some potential aggressive roosters solutions.

Roosters are incredibly territorial. This is why it is often recommended that you have one rooster to a flock of chickens.

It should be enough to mate with all of them. As soon as you introduce another rooster into the flock, then you will deal with issues.

The established rooster is going to want all of the hens to itself. This means that it is going to fight the other rooster. This could result in death or at least serious injury.

Some roosters have been known to get aggressive if there are predators in the area, or if it has felt under threat at any point.

This means that there will often be a rather sharp change in their behavior overnight.

You may also notice that there are signs of predators around the area e.g. feces or signs of digging around the fence.

You may also find that roosters get aggressive if they are sick. So, if the aggressive rooster behavior seems to have appeared out of the blue, then this is something that you will probably want to be dealing with quite quickly before it becomes a major problem!

Rooster is Attacking Chickens

As we said, roosters are prone to attacking other roosters. There isn’t much that you can do about this other than separating the birds.

Some roosters will live with each other without any issues.

However, if they are aggressive towards one another, then you will probably not be able to eliminate the problem, so one of them is going to have to go… or at least you can run a couple of chicken coops which will probably be ideal if you are raising chickens.

The chances of a rooster attacking hens are quite slim. There are some people that will note this kind of aggressive behavior in roosters, though.

If you look at a rooster and it appears to be pecking the head of a hen, this isn’t them being aggressive. It is actually related to chicken mating. It is probably going to be annoying for the hen but, we promise you, this is completely normal.

If you do have an aggressive rooster, then we wouldn’t really recommend that you keep them anywhere near chickens.

While it is rare, aggressive roosters have been known to kill chicks, especially if they are not their offspring.

Obviously, this is not something that you want to have happen, so make sure that you deal with the problem before it gets out of hand.

The second those chicks have hatched, take them out of the coop (or separate the hen with them) and raise them away from the rooster. It could save several lives.

Rooster is Attacking Me

If your rooster is attacking you then this is a territorial behavior.

Thankfully, this is something that could potentially be tamed out of most roosters. If you skip to the next section we will teach you how to do that!

How to Tame a Rooster

Taming a rooster is surprisingly simple. You need to show that you are alpha and you aren’t scared of him.

We suggest that if you are going to try and tame your rooster that you use protective clothing.

If the rooster doesn’t back down, then it is probably going to enjoy pecking at your shins. The problem is that you won’t enjoy that part all that much!

If the rooster acts aggressively towards you, then show it that you are the boss. Stomp around a little bit. Wave your arms. If you can do that, then the rooster is going to act a little bit scared. It should back away.

If the rooster doesn’t back away, don’t move. Just stare at it. This shows your dominance. The rooster will probably be staring back at you at the same time.

If the rooster is still showing aggressiveness, then you are going to need to chase it. Walk towards it to begin with. If it doesn’t move, then run towards it.

Obviously, you will want to ensure that you are not harming any other chickens at the same time.

However, they will probably have moved out of the way at this point because they will already see you as the alpha. It is just a rooster that you need to convince.

It may take a few attempts of you going into the chicken coop over several days for the rooster to properly acknowledge you as dominant.

Conclusion

Dealing with a mean and aggressive rooster can be a tough problem to deal with. We suggest that you try and follow the techniques that we gave you on how to tame a rooster.

However, if you still cannot deal with the problem, and they seem to be posing a threat to the other chickens in the coop, then it is probably going to be best to cull the rooster and bring a new one in, as sad as it seems.

An aggressive rooster is sometimes far too much trouble than it is worth.