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keeping extra cocks

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Blue Egg Acres:
Just wondering how the rest of you keep your extra cock birds? Do you run them altogether or pen them separately? If you run them together do you just let them fight it out?  I have more than I have pens to keep them separate.
BTW I have several 2010 hatch wheaten and blue wheaten cockerels available. Contact me if interested.

Jean:
Barbara,

I find if you never seperate them, they work a pecking order out before before it gets too out of hand.  

Once I have seperated them, I keep mine seperate.  I have six seperate \"rooster boxes\" and a couple grow out pens that I keep the cockerels and roosters in.

John:
I\'ve been leaving two cocks per coop of 8 - 12 or so hens.  1 cock rules the roost, while the other spends most of the time out of the way on the roost.
With some matings I rotate cocks in and out of breeding coops and sometimes keep extra LF cocks in a coop/pen together (bantam cocks in another coop).  The pecking order has to get reestablished each time one is taken out and one is added.  The neat part is they may get bloodied up, but they learn to back down rather than fight to the end.  You can try to level the playing field some by taking out the \"alpha\" cock for a day when a new one comes in the coop.  There are several ways to help make the transitions a bit smoother.

Mike Gilbert:
If you have to pen roosters together that have been apart, put at least a half dozen or more together for the first time at the same time.   That way everybody is fighting everybody, and none get beat up all that badly.  It\'s chaos at first, but they soon settle down.  I call it the apocalypse method.

Beth C:

--- Quote ---I call it the apocalypse method.
--- End quote ---

LOVE IT!!

I don\'t have much choice but to pen mine together - space is pretty limited - and they seem to work it out pretty quick.

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