One of the biggest challenges a free-range chicken farmer faces is how to stop roosters from killing each other in the breeding yard.
In my farm, I keep up to 500 hens in one breeding yard and with a mating ratio of one rooster to five hens, there would be at least 100 roosters with them.
I am breeding Manok Pinoy, a meat and egg strain which is heavy on the Oriental blood, hence the roosters could be vicious.
Penned together as matured roosters, they could fight and kill each other.
In the 10 years that I have spent developing this breed and observing their characteristics, I found out that when the roosters are raised together since the day they are hatched, they seem to agree among themselves who is the boss or the Alpha Male.
This is what is called the “Pecking Order” among chicken.
So, in a yard of 500 hens, the 100 roosters have an instinctive arrangement who gets to mate first and that rooster is the “boss.”
That is the same rooster who breaks up fights between other roosters.
So, if you would like to see a peaceful co-existence between roosters in your free-range breeding yard, make sure that from the day they are identified as male chicks, they should be raised together.
As they mature, they will go through the natural process of determining who is the boss by engaging in fights.
From this process, the Alpha Male will emerge and the pecking order will be established.
Then, there will be peace and free love in the breeding yard.
(I took these photos showing roosters and hens freely roaming in the breeding yard.)
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