Chickens!

For everything specific to B&Bs as opposed to holiday rentals.
Bunny
Posts: 3387
Joined: Wed Oct 16, 2013 8:48 pm
Location: South of England

Post by Bunny »

Dorie if you don't have any older coqs and yours have grown up together, they probably won't fight. Ours didn't.

Personally, I won't get any more cockerels because of the noise factor. However, it depends on how close your pen is to your guest accommodation (mine is far too close for comfort). Nobody ever complained about them, but I couldn't assume that the early morning alarm call didn't annoy guests and maybe they just thought that they couldn't justifiably complain being in the countryside. But who wants to be disturbed and sleep deprived on holiday. However, if the pen is a fair distance away and you have good sound proofing then they shouldn't disturb anyone.
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CarolineH
Posts: 888
Joined: Thu Sep 29, 2011 5:12 pm
Location: Nr Dinan, Brittany, France

Post by CarolineH »

I have never heard of cockerels getting on whilst living together - the only time mine have ever tolerated one another is when they were different ages and had a definite pecking order - the older one being the boss - but when the younger one reaches 1 year or 18 months he will try to take the other's "girls" - if you don't kill them then they will fight to the death - it's horrible :-( Sorry!

Incidentally, I am useless at telling the sex of a chicken until it goes cock-a-doodle-doo (which is a bit of a give-away) but I listened to a Radio 4 programme this year which explained that it is a 5 year training course to sex chickens at 1 day old !!! A good chicken sexer can do 1000 per hour :shock:
Bunny
Posts: 3387
Joined: Wed Oct 16, 2013 8:48 pm
Location: South of England

Post by Bunny »

There's no doubt they can fight until the death. We've had several coqs growing up and living together. I'm not saying they didn't have the odd spat but one soon dominated and the other backed off. If you get two that really don't get on, I think you would see signs of it before it got out of hand so you could separate them before any extreme violence.

Obviously it's best and less stressful for them not to be kept together, so if you can't bear the thought of killing one, you could advertise and give it away to someone who needs one. They certainly do help to guard the flock and are very protective of their hens.
dorie
Posts: 96
Joined: Tue Apr 30, 2013 2:46 pm
Location: Haute Savoie

Post by dorie »

I have certainly seen the benefits in regards to protecting their hens. From what I have read, they only fight if not enough hens to go round (4-6 per rooster) but I am sure they can all have their own personalities like any animal so can't rely on what you read 100%

As for the noise, we have had friends and family stay recently and all said that they didn't wake them up, but could hear them once they had woke up. They all liked the noise but not every guest will. We have an option to move them a little further away too but then they can't be seen from the house which I think guests will like.

Think this is an evolving decision process!
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