One of the few times I’ve been scared of my roosters… (1 Viewer)

[Wingfrost]

So before I get into what happened lemme just explain both of our roosters temperament so you can hopefully better understand.

Hey Hey (I know it’s technically spelled Hei Hei but this suits him)
He’s our more “dominant” boy, he’ll tolerate me the best out of my family (as I’m the main person that takes care of the flock so he knows me best). By tolerate, as long as I provide him with treats when I go into the run, don’t touch the hens where he can see, or step in between him and one of the hens he’ll leave me alone. However, he can get extra spicy and just not want me in there sometimes, so to protect myself from him I always bring a bucket to block him. But the majority of the time he does very well, I’ve learned how to read him pretty well so I can tell if he’s not in a great mood or not.

Stitch
He’s a very good boy as long as I have treats and is totally fine with me hanging out with the flock as long as I don’t put myself in between him and a hen. He’s only ever attacked me when I had a hat on and now I always make sure to not go in the run with anything covering my face (hats and masks are a no no for both of them). He also doesn’t like me messing with their food dishes but I gotta feed you and your wives mister

Okay now to what happened. A few nights ago one of the hens (Maple) wasn’t up yet in the coop and I was wanting to get comfy for the night so I went out to herd her into the coop. All the other chickens are in at this time so I did my first oopsie: I didn’t take a bucket in with me in case if one of the boys came out. I didn’t want to bring it in because all the chickens know that I carry their treats in the bucket so she would have gotten excited and alerted the rest of the flock.

So for about 5 minutes I was trying my best to get her to go into the coop, she was being extremely dramatic and making tons of noise and I could tell from the noises the boys were making that they were on edge. But I knew I could just quickly walk out of the run if one of them came out. So after about another minute or two I heard one of the boys coming out of the coop to defend their hen (at least they see it that way ). So I went to go out of the run… And this is the bad part. The doors latch was stuck and wasn’t opening. I looked to see which rooster was coming out and it obviously had to be Hey Hey, and he was MAD. He was charging full speed at me like “I finally have my chance!”.
I thankfully did manage to get the latch unstuck before he could get to me but my heart was racing because I instantly thought of when I got attacked by our first rooster and it wasn’t a fun experience. My main fear was that my mom wouldn’t have checked on me right away because she knows I hang out with the chickens so I would of been stuck in there for a while. Realistically once I would have assessed the situation in a calmer way I could have went into the quarantine section of the run with our hen Velvet until my mom came. But, my mom gets scared of the roosters easily so I still would have had to make my way past Hey Hey to get out.

I feel like some would say “Just kick him” or “he belongs on the plate” As much of a brat that he is, I love Hey Hey so very much despite him being annoying and I would never even think about doing either one of those things, he’s just doing what he thinks is best for the flock.
When we got this clutch of chickens my mom said that we would re-home any roosters to avoid these problems but thankfully both Hey Hey and Stitch stole her heart so they both have a way with making you love them.

I love my spicy roosters

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[dark_tranquility]

That's scary and kind of cute too.