Roger is a sweetheart for eleven hours a day. He comes when called. He lets himself be carted around like a feathered prince. Then dusk hits, and something in that rooster brain flips a switch. He turns into a tiny, furious general who has decided that your legs are the enemy. The poor owner is left with pecked shins and a very confusing bedtime routine.
This is not a bad rooster. This is a rooster having a bad five minutes. And honestly, that distinction matters. The owner already knows Roger is at the bottom of the pecking order. He gets pushed around by the hens all day. So when the sun goes down and he has to go back into the coop with the very bullies who spent the afternoon reminding him he's last place, his little heart probably sinks. He's not attacking out of meanness. He's attacking because he's scared of what comes next. The flapping and pecking is his way of saying, "Please, not yet. I'm not ready to go back in there with them."
That surge of testosterone the owner wonders about? It's real, but it's probably the wrong suspect. A rooster's hormones don't clock in at a specific hour. What does clock in is the routine. Roger knows the lock-up is coming. He knows that means confinement with the flock members who treat him worst. So he acts out. It's a preemptive strike against a situation he can't control. The fact that he calms down the second you hold him tells you everything. He doesn't want to fight you. He wants to feel safe, and right now, your arms are the only safe place he has.
Here is what we would tell this reader: stop trying to pin him down. That's a fight he will never lose because he's already scared. Instead, make the bedtime routine boring and kind. Scoop him up a few minutes earlier, before he has time to get worked up. Carry him into the coop yourself. Set him on his roost, give him a scratch, and close the door while he's still processing that he didn't have to fight his way there. Do that for a week, and you might find that the feathered fury is just a scared boy who needed a different kind of goodnight.