American Gamefowl

Hatch rooster in perfect feather

American Games are a gorgeous breed of chicken, but due to its highly aggressive nature sexually mature males must be kept separated.  If left to free range or penned together, males will fight to establish dominance and due to their gameness, often fight to the death.  If more than one rooster is kept, care must be taken to ensure the birds cannot reach each other.  A penned up cock or stag and a free-ranging one can cause serious damage to one another through the wire of the pen.  We have lost several good roosters this way by accident.  If death does not occur from a pen fight, the result is beak deformities, broken spurs and toes, eye injuries, and so on.  The same even applies to the hens of the breed.  If a new hen is introduced to an established flock or breeding pen, the dominant hen will fight the newcomer to maintain the pecking order.  Often the newly introduced hen doesn't give up easily and the hens will fight to the point of exhaustion and sometimes death unless one of them submits or runs off.

 Brood cocks (breeding males) will protect their hens with their lives and can become quite aggressive and hard to handle.  This often depends on the strain as some strains are more aggressive than others.  Our Radios are the most gentle roosters we have, but the original cock or "Old Man Radio" is the meanest rooster I have ever seen.  He has punched holes in my husband's legs many times and entering his pen to collect eggs is always a chore.  Even if we wait until he is on the roost at night he still pecks and attacks anything he can get a hold of. 

At 1-2 years of age the roosters are dubbed or "trimmed" which means the comb, wattles, and earlobes are removed.  This is important for the roosters' health, but is also done for show and fighting purposes.  During the winter, big floppy combs get frostbite and become necrotic, especially in a straight combed rooster.  This can cause the rooster to become ill and they will drop weight and "droop up."  If the source of infection is not removed and he doesn't get antibiotics the rooster will die.  We've had roosters to get sick because of this before and trimming them as early as possible is for the best. 

Game hens lay well during the spring and summer, but without supplemental lighting egg production pretty much stops during the molt up through cold weather.  Depending on the weather, in February egg production picks back up and by March they are laying like crazy.  Hens lay medium to large sized eggs that are white, cream, and sometimes light tan.  I have been around many breeds of poultry in my life and I have found no better mother than a game hen.  They are very protective of their chicks and have been known to burn up the legs of anyone who gets too close.  A seasoned hen will hatch and raise two clutches of chicks each year.  Young hens usually get the hang of motherhood by their second go around, but a few have surprised me and did excellent with their first chicks.  We had one little hen to hatch off a dozen or more chicks and she raised every one of them to weaning age.  That's pretty impressive, especially since she was one of our free-ranging hens.  

Roosters on leg-hitches

*stag:  a young rooster a year old or less.
*bull stag:  a rooster 13 to 18 months of age.
*cock:  a fully grown rooster, 18 months to 2 yrs of age or older.
*pullet:  a young hen, less than a year old.

Whitehackle - 1/2 Gleezen, 1/2 North Brittan

School Teacher Radio Breeding Pen

School Teacher Radio

Battle cross - Albany, Radio, Hatch, and Cardinal Club