Can 2 roosters live in peace?

Hey
I have 9 hens and one Silkie Rooster. Unfortunately his time has come and gone and out of the 20 something eggs my hens have tried to hatch only one has ( in the last 2 months ) the last time he fathered chicks was over a year ago. I want to get a new rooster in two weeks, but i dont want to get rid of my Silkie rooster - sentimental reasons:)
But if i do get a rooster, it is expected they will fight once when they first meet but what about after that? Could the new rooster kill my curent one? I dont know what type the new rooster will be if i get him.
Thanks for any advice:)

**also that one chick hatched today, have you any helpful suggestions to make sure he sticks around?:) the last two chicks my rooster had a year ago were killed at a few days old:( they were crushed by the other eggs/hen. It is a different hen now, although it is her first time having chicks. Thank you so much! It is hugely appreciated.

I've raised a LOT of roosters in the past 2 years, and they don't fight if there are enough hens to go around, 10-12 each. They're too busy! If I were doing it, I'd get a young one that isn't quite "roostering" yet, and let them get acquainted without any competitiveness going on. The first rooster I bought killed the second... not outright, but he never fully recovered and later died. Fortunately the second had had enough time before that happened to father some beautiful sons, so I've been covered ever since. When your new rooster takes over the "duties," just make sure the old rooster has someplace he can escape to once the young one begins to get the upper hand. When I raise roosters from chicks and they fight, we eat the most aggressive ones and leave the nice ones for the hens.

I remove the chicks from the mothers as soon as they're dry and walking... if they stay with the hens for long, they don't do as well on their own... besides getting trampled on, they're always waiting for someone to tell them what to eat, and they're never as easy to handle when they get older. It allows the hens to start laying much quicker as well. Good luck... hope you don't get addicted to chicks like I am... they can be pretty time consuming (wasting).

Thanks:3 i have no set up or anything though, so I'll have to keep the chick with the hen for a while

I would never remove a chick from a hen...she will brood it far better than we ever could, especially a lone chick. A chick raised by a hen is much better on forage, is healthier, is better at flocking and socializing. There really is no need to handle chickens unless one shows birds, so the increased flightiness of the chick raised by the hen is a desirable trait in a flock..it can mean the difference between life an death out on free range.

I've never had a rooster kill another and I agree with getting a young cockerel that can learn the job from the oldster. This has worked well for me in the past and resulted in the oldster being eventually dethroned but not harmed in any way and him still having his few old gals to herd around. It's immensely easier on free range for two roosters to avoid one another, particularly if the top roo is the young up and comer of the flock and has won his position from the elder.

The egg farm I worked on would keep 6 or more roosters (depending on the time of year) in their brood pens.
(Layers were kept apart from the breeders)
It was always easy to see who was the cock-of-the-walk, but even the guy at the bottom of the pecking order 'got plenty'.

They never had problems with the roosters fighting, but there was always plenty of hens to go around.
Each of them seemed to have their own harem clustered around him.
As long as a rooster got to do what he was born to do, they all got along fine.

One day, a falcon or hawk tried to steal a chick. Three roosters from the adjoining pen came over the fence to join the fracas.
By the time we could get out there, there wasn't enough left of it to identify!
Never underestimate the value of roosters - especially in free range.

Haha i have experienced that myself with hens, an old crow crash landed near the hens, they all attacked him, ripped out his feathers and gouged out his eyes 0.0


I never looked at them in the same way!

@ John

Same here. Several Roo's, no issues. (Moved on the ones who were.) Lost a few to the foxes last year; the lead, a little banti mix charged across the field after the foxes to save the other roosters taken at the forest edge. He got the foxes to drop them (pack hunting) and he was fighting the pack as I was catching up to everyone. Unfortunately, the foxes killed him before I made it to him. I am always surprised when I hear people insist you can only own one Rooster. We plan to always keep 4-8 on our property.

I have one Americana rooster with my egg layers and have just introduced another rooster into the flock that I had to separate from my meat chickens because he was getting too beat up by the other roosters he was with. So far - my Americana has been very territorial. I'm not sure if it's just the situation but so far in my experience Rooster don't play well together.

Its a bank holiday monday here in Ireland, and im just after buying a six month old miniature sussex! Hopefully he will play nice with my silkie roo:)



Hopefully!!! * fingers crossed *

Keep him in a cage or separate them somehow for a day to let them start getting used to each other. Good luck with the new roo! Ours are straight-run and the roosters pretty much get along fine. But they're not penned so the less dominant ones can stay away from the others when they need to.

Re: the silkies - if your hens are silkies sometimes they accidentally strangle the chicks - the chicks wriggle to snuggle up under the feathers but if a feather gets wrapped around the chick the hen will panic and flap/run all around, killing the chick. We had it happen once and a silkie breeder said they clip the feathers on theirs because it's a fairly common tragedy.

Free ranged with their mother, the chicks do much better, tho the hen is at risk because she may give her life to protect the chick from cats, dogs, etc., and is stuck on the ground until the chick can flap up to a roost so in danger from predators at night as well. Our broody hens have all been lost to foxes this year so we started taking their chicks away so they'll go roost up high again. If they are penned the other hens may kill the chicks out of boredom or due to insufficient nutrients in their diets. If a free range hen ever attacks a chick she'll go in the pot the next day no matter how good a layer she was.

Thank you Renate! Very helpful so far he is getting on ok with the old Roo ( he even put his head in his feathers while being chased by the hens ) - its the hens he is worried about! He has since learned to hide on the mesh gate in the picture

Thats terrible unfortunate about Silkie hens, at least now i know what most likely happened.

My flock are in a run, because foxes live all around and often prowl about the place. They have to be relocated to a different spot by December when a shed is being built, i hope to give them more space, and divide it up a bit with shrubbery.
Very helpful:) Especially about Silkies

All the excitement and fear should be over after the first couple days. Ive had 5 roos with 90 layers for awhile and then decided to add one more when we purchased 30 more hens. There was an initial testosterone fest between the new too and 'Roscoe', the big boy in the pasture, but things settled down quickly. Now as far as the hens were concerned, it took it him a little longer to win over the girls. The girls ran him around for probably a week until he was able to claim a few for his own. Now all is well and they are a big happy family as long as each rooster sticks to his own girls.