Clueless About Chickens

Being an animal lover and farming enthusiast I like to think that I'm quite well qualified for my part time job as a pet sitter. I'm even vet nurse trained, not that it amounts to much but it makes me look good on paper.
As kids me and my sister had rabbits, guinea pigs and gerbils as well as fish.  We started with cold water fish and progressed to tropical. We were even breeding guppies at one point, although not necessarily on purpose.
I've also owned rats, a goat, a cat, a hedgehog and two dogs (neither for much more than a year but long enough to fall in love). I've helped care for degus, bearded dragons, mice, pigs, horses, sheep and cows. I've worked with both beef and dairy cattle and even did a season of calf rearing.
The point I'm trying to make is that I have basic knowledge and experience with a good variety of domestic animals and I have owned or cared for almost all of the species commonly owned as pets. I have only one area of complete ignorance and that is birds.  Apart from a short term shared ownership of an elderly and vicious budgie that i was terrified of, I have very little idea about birds.  I've looked after peoples chickens of course but my knowledge is quite literally limited to the fact that you put grain in the coop and take eggs out.  

I don't know anything about when or what they need to lay eggs.  Is a rooster necessary? Why and when do they go clucky and how do you stop it? Do they sit on the nest all day and if so when do they eat? Nutritional requirements, health issues, breed differences, behavior and life span are all a mystery to me. 
I'm currently looking after 16 hens and a crabby rooster which is a bit of a worry considering how little I know. The hens are mostly very well behaved although it did take a week and a half for one of them to trust me enough to be in the coop at the same time as me.  Another sneaky girl started laying her eggs in a cupboard in the tool shed and it took me 9 days to find her nest which was looking rather full by then! I water tested the eggs and they all seem fine, she hadn't been sitting on them so I guess they were stored in a cool dark place.  

The rooster however is turning out to be a nuisance. For the first week he was great, he looked after his hens and left me alone. Then one day he decided to wage war and have a go at me which didn't go down well with me considering I'm not an uber fan of birds anyway and its always somewhat nerve wracking to have something attacking you in the vicinity of your ankles!  Especially when I was only wearing jandals and shorts, it felt like I had rather too much flesh exposed when there was a grumpy chicken flashing his talons around. 

Like a good nerd I went straight to google to see what I could do and it suggested following him around and picking him up if possible. I haven't managed to pick him up but I have found that if I extend my arms towards him he will walk away from me which is all cool until I turn my back on him and he rushes me again.  So we play a weird game of follow the rooster every night now until I can lock him in the coop at which point I then go and fetch the grain and return to feed the hens. I really quite resent him though as he has turned my pleasant evening task into an absolute chore. I really hate having to go and pit my wits again a damn bird every night especially since I do them no harm. Why can't he just be nice and eat the grain and follow his hens and pretend I don't exist like they do.

If anyone has any tips or hints or useful facts about chickens I'd very much like to hear them. Any ideas about how to cope with an errant rooster would also be much appreciated!