How to get your roosters to stop fighting each other in 4 simple steps
Can roosters live peacefully together? I answered that question in last week’s video below, or you can read the blog post version, Can you raise more than one rooster in your flock?
In the video above I explain that, yes, you can actually train your roosters to stop fighting with each other, but I didn’t go into much detail on how.
In this week’s video, I go into all the nitty-gritty details of exactly how to train your roosters to stop fighting and to live peacefully together. Check it out below:
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Myth: You can’t stop your roosters from fighting each other.
You’ve probably heard the myth that you can’t stop roosters from fighting each other. It’s in their nature, and if you keep multiple roosters together, you’re gonna end up with dead roosters.
Well, this myth is wrong on two accounts. First of all, some roosters can live together peacefully without a lot of effort on your part. I talked about that in my last video, called Can you keep multiple roosters in your flock? You’ll find it at the top of this post.
And I actually suggest you watch that video first. There’s some important information in there that I’m not going to repeat here, so take a look at it if you’re really interested in following this training.
And then secondly, this myth—that you can’t stop your roosters from fighting each other—is also wrong because it assumes that rooster behavior is static, when in fact it is very dynamic.
And that means if you have a rooster who’s aggressive, either to people or to other roosters, you can work with him to change that behavior. Roosters are both very smart and very social, so you can train them.
In the rest of this post, you’ll learn exactly how to train your roosters to stop fighting with each other.
How I know rooster training can be done
But before I jump into this topic, I want to be completely transparent with you that I haven’t trained my roosters this way, because I haven’t needed to, although I am excited to try this training program next spring. I have a couple of roosters who get a little feisty during mating season, so I’ll be trying this with them then.
I do, however, have experience with training roosters in other scenarios. So, I have had roosters who were very human-aggressive, and I’ve trained them using positive dog training methods to no longer be aggressive, so this stuff really does work if you are willing to put in the time, the patience, and the effort.
For more on my methods of training human-aggressive roosters using kind methods, check out my post, Aggressive roosters: How I tame mine with love in 6 simple steps.
But back to the point at hand—when I looked into this problem of how to stop roosters in your flock from fighting with each other, I turned to the sanctuaries.
Because I know that a lot of sanctuaries rescue cockfighting roosters from illegal cockfighting rings. And cockfighting roosters have been bred to be vicious to other roosters, to want to kill them, and everyone says you can’t ever keep cockfighting roosters together because they will fight to the death, no exceptions.
So, I thought, well, what do the sanctuaries do? Do they house all these rescued cockfighting roosters separately?
And the answer is, no. In fact, they train these roosters to live peacefully together. And if cockfighting roosters can live peacefully together, your domestic breed roosters can too. Again, if you’re willing to put the time and work in.
As one sanctuary worker said about training, “It’s time consuming, but not particularly difficult…”
“It’s time consuming but not particularly difficult, if you understand roosters.”
So, I’m going to go over the process here that sanctuaries use in order to train these fighting birds to live together, and I’ll link to a couple of sanctuary article sources at the end of this post.
So, first I’m just going to tell you step-by-step how the sanctuaries do this with their rescued fighting roosters, and then I’ll bring it back around to backyard chickens and how you can apply it to your situation.
4 simple steps to train your roosters to stop fighting and to live in harmony
Step 1: Safely separate the aggressive rooster in his own cage.
So step 1, when the sanctuary gets a new rooster, they put him in a very large and portable cage, where he’ll be mostly living for possibly a few weeks.
And then they put that cage out in the chicken yard where the flock is at and this way the rooster can see the flock and the flock can see the rooster, but they can’t hurt each other.
Step 2: Spread food around the outside of the cage.
Step 2, they then sprinkle a bunch of food around the outside of the cage in the chicken yard, so the flock chickens are encouraged to forage next to the cage and start getting familiar with the rooster and vice versa.
And the rooster may posture and try to fight with the flock roosters and they may even respond in kind, but they can’t actually engage through the cage.
Step 3: Remove the rooster from the cage and calm him down.
And then step 3, every once in a while, a sanctuary worker will take the rooster out of the cage, and she’ll hold the rooster until he calms down and his heart rate is low. And they do that because they want him calm before they let him interact with the other chickens.
Step 4: Allow the rooster to interact in the flock until he becomes aggressive—then separate him immediately.
And step 4, they let the rooster loose in the yard. And they let him remain free until he starts a fight. And when that happens, they pick him back up and they put him back in his cage.
And they do this step of holding him and letting him out a very minimum of twice a day, sometimes several times a day.
And then at night, they move the cage with the rooster in it into the coop with the other chickens. So, he’s still in his cage, sleeping for the night, but he’s getting used to the coop and the flock and they’re getting used to him.
And this is it, day in and day out. 4 simple steps over and over. And what happens is that as time goes on, the rooster will gradually be free in the yard for a longer and longer period of time before he starts a fight. And eventually, he’ll just stop starting fights altogether, and then he can be left alone.
How to apply these sanctuary techniques to your backyard chickens
Okay, so let’s apply this to backyard chickens.
If you have one aggressive rooster, do this…
So, let’s start simple and say you just have two roosters, and one is being aggressive to another. You would take that aggressive rooster, and you would do this process with him, basically the same way.
First, you want to put him in his own separate enclosure within the larger run. You could use any of the following:
You could probably DIY something if you want to. Just use something that allows your rooster to have some space to move around a little bit because he will initially be spending a lot of time in this cage.
Be sure to put a small feeder, waterer, and bedding in his cage.
And then move the cage around the yard as you need to. So put him in the shade for when it’s hot out or in the sun when it’s cold, and so on.
And just proceed as the sanctuary workers do with their fighting roosters.
If you have more than one aggressive rooster, do this…
What if you have more than 1 aggressive rooster?
So, the sanctuaries actually use these methods with multiple birds at a time. When they get a bunch of cockfighting rescues in at once, they put each rooster in his own cage around the chicken yard and do this process simultaneously. You obviously don’t want to let the aggressive roosters out of their cages together simultaneously, just do that step one at a time, but that’s what you’d do if you have more than one.
If ALL of your roosters are aggressive, do this…
So, there is some confusion that comes in if you don’t have any non-aggressive roosters. So, let’s say you have a flock of hens and just two roosters and both of those roosters are aggressive with each other, what would you do? And that’s a really, really good question and it’s not one that I’ve seen addressed.
So, I’ll tell you what I’d do (and I will be testing this next spring).
I’d put one of those roosters in the cage and do this process with him, and when I let him loose in the yard (step 4), whichever rooster starts the fight, I’d then put that rooster in the cage.
So, I’d alternate the aggressive roosters in and out as I needed to, and basically just whatever rooster starts the aggression, is the rooster that needs to be separated. So, you’re kind of training them both at once. It may take a little longer, and I will be experimenting with this next spring, so I’ll let you know how it goes and what I learn.
Can every rooster be trained? Pretty much…
The truth about this whole process is that you really can train roosters to live peacefully if you’re highly motivated. Like I said, if sanctuaries can get cockfighting breeds to live together, we can get our backyard breeds to live together. The only thing stopping us is our own motivation.
Because, think about it for a minute. One of the sanctuary articles I read, which I’ve linked to in the sources below, says that sometimes they only let the rooster loose twice a day. You could do that before and after work. Or you could do that right after work and a few hours later, whatever it is. It will likely take longer than if you could do let him loose several times a day, but if you really want to do it, you can make it work.
The part that really takes a lot of time is that you have to supervise that rooster 100% of the time when he’s loose in the yard. What you can’t do is let him loose and then go check on him later to see if he’s being feisty.
This technique will not work if you don’t separate your rooster immediately when he gets aggressive. Because you’re teaching him—this is what happens when you get aggressive. There’s a consequence every time. You have to go back in your cage.
If you’re not consistent and you don’t put him back in his cage every single time he’s aggressive (like when he gets aggressive and you don’t see it because you’re not supervising), then he can’t learn the lesson.
Your rooster won’t learn that fighting is not acceptable, because instead, you’ve taught him that sometimes it is. Sometimes he fights and nothing happens. So you have to fully supervise him when he’s not in his cage, which means this type of training does take your time.
Let me know how training goes for you—leave a comment below if you decide to try these techniques. Good luck!
For more help
For more help on solving your rooster problems, including one-on-one consults, see roovolution.org.