A Rooster is an adult male chicken. A rooster usually crows at sunrise. Roosters find it easier living with other roosters especially if they grew up together from a young age. Some roosters find it difficult to get along with adult roosters that are introduced into the coop. You can keep a rooster as a pet.
A rooster is usually territorial. It likes to protest its dominance when it is amongst other chickens. If you have a rooster and you want to know if it can find its way home, I will tell you. Yes, it can. Your rooster can find its way home on its own after it goes into hiding or goes missing. If you train your rooster properly, it can easily find its way home if it gets missing.
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A rooster may leave its coop when it is frightened or get threatened by a predator. It could be quite fun for you and your rooster when you try to catch it when it leaves its coop. If your rooster is not in a chicken coop, you are exposing it to predators. And if it is not in the chicken coop, it won’t perform its job of fertilizing the eggs that your hen lays. If you don’t want your rooster to get hurt by a predator, ensure you catch it and take it back to its coop.
If you train your rooster to return to its coop every night, it will most likely find its way home by itself if it gets missing from its coop. Ensure you make your rooster get used to the food, water, and chickens in its coop so that if anything happens, it will want to run back to the place where it gets its food, shelter, and food from. Let the coop be where your rooster can only find food and water. Don’t feed it outside its coop. Remove any time of food or water from the place your rooster must have gone to and leave the door of the coop open, so it can easily enter when it finds its way home. This will encourage your rooster to go back into its coop if it escapes. Your rooster likes being protective of the hens it stays within its coop so, ensure you keep your hens inside the coop when you can’t find your rooster, this will encourage it to want to find its way home to be with the hens it stays within the coop. Leaving the door of the coop open is one way you can help the rooster enter its coop when it eventually decided to find its way home.
Also, if you also want to catch your rooster, do it when your chickens have gone to roost at night. It will be simple for you to do it when it is sleeping. So, when you find your rooster, grab its wings down and quickly don’t allow it to fly away. You can use a blanket or net to catch your rooster if you don’t want to use your hands to catch it. Use this blanket or net to catch it when it is not sleeping yet. Although it is quite difficult catching a rooster with a net especially when it spots you when you attempt to do that. And then, if your rooster still has leg spurs, it will use them to tear the net because of how sharp they are. Use an item of long clothing, eyewear, and gloves to get yourself protected from being injured by your rooster’s beak if you attempt to catch it.
A poultry hook is another tool you can use to catch your rooster if you don’t want to use your hand. Using this hook grabs the legs of your rooster easily and brings it to you.
Spending enough time interacting and playing with your rooster every day so that it will know you as someone that provides it with food and not someone that wants to harm it. You can easily catch your rooster if you’ve been handling it often because it already knows you as its food source and not a predator. Your rooster will allow you to take it back to its coop if it leaves its coop.
When you first bring your rooster home to stay with your hens, you shouldn’t just throw it into the coop without doing some basic things. This is because a rooster is territorial and can be aggressive. It will want to know its place amongst other chickens when it is introduced to a new environment. There are steps you should take before you can keep your rooster to stay with your hens.
Step1
Before you keep your rooster to stay with the other flock of chickens, keep it separately from the flock you have for some weeks. Dedicate enough time to study the behavior of your rooster before you introduce him to the flock you already have. Handling and studying it during this period will help you know how to handle it if anything happens between it and your existing flock of chickens.
Step 2
Make sure you strengthen your chicken coop before you eventually introduce your rooster into the flock. To prevent your rooster from escaping out of the coop, close any holes on the bottom part of the fence and close any gap too with chicken wire. Since your rooster is more territorial and aggressive, it tries to be protective of the hens it stays with and if he perceives any form of threat from an outsider, it might want to escape from its coop.
Step 3
Let your coop has another roost in it where your rooster can occupy because of its large weight. Since your chickens sleep on the ground, your rooster should have a robust roost where it can stay in the coop.
Step 4
You can then keep your rooster in a small wire cage and place it at the center of the coop. Leave it there for one hour so that your chickens can become eager about it and get used to it staying with them in the coop.
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Step 5
Gently open the coop so that the rooster can come out. Your rooster may either wait for the hens to gather around it or it will come out and start discovering things by itself. If they don’t mingle well after this, take the rooster out of its coop and repeat the same process the next day.
Step 6
Your rooster naturally dominates whenever it finds itself among hens. So, allow it to freely display this aspect of its behavior among your hens. Let him lead while your hens follow.
Conclusion
Now that you are aware that your rooster can find its way home, ensure you do everything possible to avoid it leaving its coop too. You can train your rooster to get used to its coop so even if it escapes, finding its way home won’t be difficult.
Adding a rooster to your flock of chicken is an amazing addition. It can help to protect your hens because it is territorial. There are so many benefits it comes with. Just make sure you follow the steps that were earlier outlined on how to properly introduce a rooster to your flock of chickens.
Training your rooster properly will save you from a lot of stress.