built my chicken herd from several sources - against advice 🤔

I live in a tiny Scandinavian country. We almost let our hardened local chicken breeds go extinct. Commercial growers wanted profitable hybrids and you guess the rest.

So I wanted to build my chicken herd of our old cold-hardy disease resistant landrace chicken. But there are only a handful of growers per breed. So I decided to get my flock from four different breeds.

4 pullets plus a rooster "Savitaipale"
4 layers  "Alho"
7 layers  plus a rooster "Iitti"
Waiting for 8 pullets "Piikkiö"

Now this thing about roosters got a bit problematic....

My chickens reside in an 1 acre fruit orchard. Plenty of space for 15 chicks and two roosters, I thought. The 4+4 had been living there for 3 weeks. Today, 7+1 group was let into the other end of the orchard. For half a day, the herds did not even notice there is another herd in the same orchard. But then the roosters did notice.

The roosters met, spread their wings and tried to look imposing and then departed. But the crowing got really overpowering. And they visited the middle "no-mans-land " all the time.

Can I leave them to get along? Or should I just move one herd to the future sheep pasture?

Kaarina Kreus wrote:Can I leave them to get along? Or should I just move one herd to the future sheep pasture?

My friend always had multiple roosters co-mingling in her chicken yard, so it is possible, but it may also require some human engineering!

1. So long as the roosters are "posturing" I'd leave them at it.
2. Fights need to be broken up, ideally with firm words to start.
3. Try to observe who the aggressor is - or if they're equally causing trouble.
4. Ideally you need to have two "time out cages" if you see things are getting rough. It's amazing how well time-out can work! Ideally just time out the one bird that starts the fight for 1/2 hour or so. As with kids, the more often and more consistent you are with time out, the better it works. We both know that's easier said than done!

I'm in the process of trying to do this with my two Muscovy drakes. Earl is the aggressor consistently. Twice recently, I've grabbed him out of the fight and tossed him into his overnight shelter. Yesterday, I saw the early stage of posturing. Earl had moved into Bro's territory and they were doing the Muscovy non-verbal communication head bobbing and feather raising, so I started up field with my hockey stick (really just a herding tool and normally duck stick-handling practice is fully non-contact, but two large fighting Muscovy warrant hockey stick back-up) Earl saw me approaching while I was still about 20 feet down slope and he practically flew down the slope out of Bro's area. I followed him all the way back down the slope to reinforce the message, but seeing his reaction to me gives me hope that he's not going to end up as dinner! He's got his own girls, and he knows he's supposed to be close to them as we've had multiple deadly eagle attacks this spring. He's the younger of the two males, but he's clearly got far more of an aggressive nature than Bro does. It's a balance - you want a male to do his job, and young males do tend to be full of "piss and vinegar", so you have to give them a little time to outgrow that stage, but ultimately Earl will have to either learn to co-exist, or he will be replaced.

So I would wait and watch and guide at this point. Two roosters watching and setting off alarm bells if trouble comes, is an asset. Yes, they can be taught to "get along" but they may not learn it on their own. If they're "teenager" chickens, it takes more work than older roosters who have figured out that there are enough hens to go around!

That said, you've got a variety of breeds of birds. At some point are you going to want to segregate a rooster and specific hens for breeding purposes? If so, consider those long term needs/goals while figuring out how to do "time out" so that infrastructure can fill multiple needs.

Jay, thank you!! Your answer really helps me.I have observed both roosters with their herds, and both are really good. Protective, helpful and team builders.

Without knowing your advice, I did put the aggressor rooster to a chick cage for an hour to cool things down!  Chick cage was the only incarceration available at the time 🤣

As you said, he came out a dedicated rooster to his herd with no posturing towards the other one. He ran to his herd and started putting them to a good nights sleep. The herd seemed so much more organised and content with him there. I really want to keep both roosters, I am fortunate to have really good ones.. ..

So thanks ❤️ I will be monitoring potential clashes. There is hope all could end up well. After all, enough gals and plenty of space.

Let the roosters do their thing. When we first got into guard dogs several years ago we learned a valuable lesson that has helped us with all of our animals. Our mentor told us that unless one dog was actually KILLING the other one, and only then, you should never break up a fight. If you have a preference for who to be top, make sure that one wins, but try to never break up a fight. If you do, you only delay the issue, and it often becomes worse. If you just let them fight it out then they'll settle who's on top and work into each others company. If you break their fights up then you will make it worse and they will never learn to live together. If it does move past the posturing stage, which isn't necessarily going to happen, then be ready for blood. Combs bleed, faces bleed, wings bleed... it probably won't kill them. I've raised chickens for more than ten years now and have never had one rooster kill another. This is going to sound awful, but if one does kill the other then you either have an incredibly aggressive rooster (unlikely since it started as posturing, not a full fight), or one was too weak to start with. You want the strongest rooster you can get in your flock, so if one is weak enough to die from a fight then you probably shouldn't use them anyways.
I wouldn't be concerned about the multiple sources thing, that's how you ensure genetic diversity, so great choice on that one in my opinion!

Roosters mark territory by yelling at each other, much like songbirds do. They will yell and try to intimidate each other by yelling louder than the other, or more often, or longer. Since it's part of what being a rooster is, it's probably best to accept it.
They will probably crow at each other starting pretty early in the morning. Maybe they think it's extra-intimidating at 3am. I'm sure I don't know how they think. I do know that you will get used to them and will learn the different tones of their crows and what they might mean.

I have 7 roosters right now. They live together more or less well. There's a Main rooster who watches over the entire flock, and the other roosters will take charge of "their" hens. They work together to protect against predators and will fight each other if one of them misbehaves.
In a situation where roosters have room to get away and a place to hide out, it's very rare for them to fight to the death. In fact, most fights between chickens for any reason tend to be the two annoyed birds hopping at each other and maybe kicking out once or twice. I can count the number of bloody rooster fights I've seen, and the number of bloody roosters from fighting other roosters I've patched up on one hand - in many years of chicken keeping - it's just not that common.
They fight. They will posture, hop, and strike at each other, but usually they break away and one rooster will run before it gets serious.

I love the idea of land-racing for your environment. So many good breeds are the result of land-racing. Letting the chickens do chicken things and sort things out for themselves mean that you will eventually have one large flock with two roosters, and a bunch of hens working together. That's easier for you to take care of and mixes up the genes that much better.

I think your plan of "time-outs", since it seems to be working for your rooster, and encouraging them to get along will work. It'll be noisy while they sort things out, but I think you won't have much trouble.
Good luck with your flock and breeding plan!

edited for grammar - kk20/5/23

Kristine Keeney wrote:

Roosters mark territory by yelling at each other. They will yell and try to intimidate each other by yelling louder than the other, or more often, or in tones of their crows and what they might mean.
They will posture, hop, and strike at each other, but usually they break away and one rooster will run before it gets serious.

I think your plan of "time-outs", since it seems to be working for you

edited for grammar - kk20/5/23

Thank you ❤️
You all have very sweetly pointed out, that I probably was too hasty in crying out for help. You are right.
I should meddle and manage less.

Chickens are descendants of ancien dinosaurs. And I have the nerve to think tgey will not manage their affairs without my blessed meddling?

They look like they have it nice! You have no problem with predators?

The reason why some advise against using several origins of chicken herds is because if you always mix, you may loose some interesting adaptations. For example, if you always mix barnyard chickens (=landrace) with hybrid chickens, you will end up with a chicken flock that has the low genetic diversity of the Lohmann hybrids. That is because you always end up with an input of genetics from the hybrids, and again, and again.

If you chose only one of the breeds, others know what you have. If you have a mix, it attracts maybe fewer customers interested in conserving an ancient breed. With one flock, it is difficult to develop a breed on your own, reason why most stick to one breed and have the same breeding goal.

One successful person developing his own chicken breed was the one breeding the Quamby chicken
https://permies.com/t/154673/dual-purpose-chicken-breeds

Not saying you should do anything differently, just saying that there are different ways of doing stuff, which makes it interesting

Kaarina Kreus wrote:You all have very sweetly pointed out, that I probably was too hasty in crying out for help. You are right.
I should meddle and manage less.

Many of us here on permies, LOVE chickens. You are a brand new chicken supervisor and I would far prefer that you ask questions here on permies where lots of people have had real life experience with them, than have anything bad befall them due to your learning curve.

It sounds as if you've acquired birds suitable for your ecosystem, so they should know what to do, but for every rule there is an exception, and there are roosters out there that would fight to the death if no one intervened even if it's rare.

hans muster wrote:

If you chose only one of the breeds, others know what you have. If you have a mix, it attracts maybe fewer customers interested in conserving an ancient breed.

This will partly depend on your goals and long term plans. Again, it's not "all or none". I've had a huge amount of trouble on my farm due to Island wide inbreeding and bad choices made by an island breeder regarding Khaki Campbell ducks. Getting new breeding stock from off island that I *know* is good is incredibly difficult at the small scale I'm working at. Finally, I've started actually encouraging the introduction of a bit of Golden 300 stock into my khaki's and am keeping visible non-khaki traits. My livability has improved, but this spring due to weather, of the 11 ducklings hatched, 9 are male... sigh... Eventually, I may try to keep only "khaki looking" birds and breed them to reinforce that, but in the short term, hatchability and livability are my breeding goals. Excellent egg laying will closely follow, as that is what Khakis are known for. I'm having the khaki's hatched by my Muscovy - I try to avoid incubators and use them only as back-up. They don't quite speak the same language, but they get along well enough!

In the short term, I recommend you spend time just watching your chickens and learning their quirks - better than TV in my opinion (but TV is a pretty low bar in my opinion also!) Fine tuning your goals could be seasons down the road.

I am only interested in having a diverse flock of old landraces. I will not take any hybrids. I had four "expired" production hybrids offered free of charge 3 months ago - now turns out only one of them is still alive!!! Others contracted some health problems at the ripe old age of 2 years 🙄

So my birds are all old landraces. But since the old landraces are so rare, I fear their genetics may not be very variable.

I am not going to sell either eggs or chicks. The bureaucracy and certifications involved are so expensive, that I would need 200 layers as a minimum.

I am sticking with my diversified strategy: veggies, orchard, fish, chicken, mushrooms, escargots, bees and berries. I value resilience over everything else.  I want to have as many different support pillars as possible.