One of the reasons why roosters are kept is to keep the peace in the flock, hens submit to roosters and roosters keep squabbles and fights in the coop from happening.
Knowing this, finding out that your rooster hates one hen, and is terrorizing her, can be quite confusing. This article looks into why this happens
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Rooster hates one hen:
Roosters can be quite aggressive towards each other and fights between them can get very intense. Both birds will attack each other and both birds will try to defend themselves, a fight between two roosters is usually a fair fight.
However, an altercation between a rooster and a hen will not be a fair fight. The hen will likely submit to the rooster and take his attacks.
Reasons why your rooster seems to hate one hen may be:
The rooster is mean:
Not all roosters are made equal, some fulfill their role of protecting the whole flock, and other roosters do not. Your rooster may simply be mean to one hen in particular for no reason.
If a rooster was not raised with a ‘mother hen’ this rooster may not be responsible and may even be a nuisance in the flock. These types of roosters may be more rude and aggressive towards some hens.
Sometimes roosters will mellow out after some time, but some won’t.
What to do:
You may have to remove the rooster from the flock and get a completely new rooster.
Roosters are meant to be the protectors of the flock. These birds are meant to keep the hens safe from predators and keep them from fighting with each other. These birds are also there to make sure a chicken’s eggs are fertilized.
If your rooster isn’t doing its job then you’d have to get rid of it and replace it with a rooster that protects and doesn’t attack your hens.
If you don’t get rid of this mean bird then the bird may start to attack other birds and even start to attack people too.
He thinks something is wrong:
Roosters can sense when something is wrong with a member of their flock and will act on it.
In the wild, weak, sick, or injured chickens were seen as easy targets for predators and would be attacked first. For this reason, this sick, injured, or weak bird will pose a danger to the whole flock because it attracts predators.
To keep from being attacked, the flock would attack and may even kill this liability bird. This may be what’s going on between your chicken and rooster.
If the rooster knows that there is something wrong with a hen then he may attack her. The other hens may eventually notice the same thing and will start to peck at her and attack her too.
What to do:
Separate the two birds to see whether there is indeed something wrong with your hen.
If she seems more relaxed, calm, and overall more like herself when she is removed from the rooster then the rooster was likely just being mean to her.
If she acts unlike herself, if she lays soft shell eggs, or acts badly then there is something wrong with her
You don’t have enough hens:
If you have a rooster on your property you need to have enough hens for the rooster to mate with or else the rooster will overbreed and injure the one hen.
Having one hen to one rooster is not enough, the one hen will get all the sexual attention from the rooster and this is not normal or healthy for the hen.
One rooster needs 10 hens in order to maintain a healthy relationship with all of them. This number of hens will keep him from becoming too aggressive with the one hen.
What to do:
If you have less than 10 hens to one rooster then you’d need to quickly get more hens to accommodate the rooster, doing this will keep the peace on your property.
If you can’t accommodate more hens on your property then you’d need to get rid of the rooster.
Having multiple hens and no roosters is not an issue (as long as you don’t want your hen’s eggs hatching chicks), having one rooster to too few hens is a problem
If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other chicken related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: What To Feed A Broody Hen, Broody Hen Keeps Switching Nests, Broody Hen Has No Eggs, Rooster Biting Hens Neck