By Bill Radford
In the human world, we’re taught to revere our elders — theoretically, at least.
In the chicken world, though, it’s all about the pecking order. And our senior rooster — we’ll call him Grandpa — has fallen to the bottom of that pecking order.
The first thing I noticed was that Grandpa seemed reluctant to go to the chicken coop at night. And when he was inside the coop, he was no longer perched on a roost but was sitting on the ground in a corner, facing the wall. And he was just not himself; he seemed sluggish and didn’t fight at all when we would pick him up.
We thought he might be sick. We treated him for lice — a common issue in chickens — and put him in quarantine for several days. He seemed better, standing up straight instead of just being a lump on the floor, and crowing. So I put him back in the chicken yard; I probably should have put him directly in the coop, but I thought this way he could assimilate back slowly into the flock.
Big mistake. Because instead he disappeared.
He was gone for five days — five days that included plunging temperatures and a blanket of snow. We figured we had lost him forever, that we’d find his frozen body at some point.
And then I went out one morning and there he was hanging out in the side yard, seemingly fine though quite hungry. We fed him, then opened the gate between the side yard and the chicken enclosure so that the other chickens could greet him.
That’s when we discovered he was no longer king of the flock. Before, he ruled — guarding the hens from potential predators and chasing away our two junior roosters if they got too attentive toward the girls. Now, though, the two junior roosters were chasing him away, keeping him on the outskirts.
It was quite a fall from grace for the old gentleman. Luckily, we had a second, unused coop, so we established new living quarters for him there, giving him an older hen for company and fencing in that coop. He stayed hidden in the coop for a few days, but now comes out regularly at least to eat and drink and look around; I even put up a screen to keep the other chickens out of view in case they were intimidating him.
It’s not that I am a big fan of Grandpa; in his younger days, he would often attack me — typically when I was looking the other way; he apparently never heard the saying warning against biting the hand that feeds you. He scarred my ankle more than once with the sharp spurs on his legs. (There is a way to remove those spurs, by the way.) Still, it was sad to see him bullied and afraid.
Apparently, it is not uncommon to see a change in the pecking order. One person on a thread on backyardchickens.com told of their rooster, Mr. P, who, with every addition to the flock, “was sure to let everyone know he’s the boss.” Then came the day when the youngest rooster in the flock took on Mr. P in a fight — and won. “And just like that, our most dominant rooster, highest on the pecking order, quickly dropped to one of the lowest positions on the pecking order,” the post stated.
That person was seeking advice since the young rooster was leaving the older one battered and bleeding –— and the advice given was that either one of the roosters had to go or the person should follow our path and build separate quarters for the fallen rooster.
Meanwhile, I imagine we haven’t seen the last fight for dominance amid our flock. We got six chicks last year — two hatched here thanks to a hen who set up a secret nest, while the four others we sought out — and it seems three are roosters. One, we have already rehomed to someone who wanted that particular breed, but that still leaves us with four roosters. (Five if you count the isolated Grandpa.) They may or may not get along, but there’s also the issue of the hen-rooster ratio; too many roosters can be tough on the hens and also can promote fighting. The ideal ratio, many sources say, is one rooster to 10 hens; some say you can get away with as few as four hens per rooster.
At least being out in the country we’re allowed roosters, unlike in cities like Colorado Springs. The Baltimore Sun recently reported on a rooster “epidemic” fueled by backyard coops. “A yearslong surge in displaced roosters is overwhelming animal sanctuaries in Maryland and across the country, fueled by a pandemic-born boom in backyard chicken coops and the noisy realities of owning a male bird,” the article stated.
This senior rooster is no longer king of the coop. (Photo by Bill Radford)
