How many cocks/cockerels does everyone have?

Ridgerunner said:

What year? What time of year? The numbers change so much so often it’s hard to answer.

My main coop is 8’ x 12’ with a 12’ x 32’ run plus about 45’ x 90’ inside electric netting. I also have a 4’ x 8’ grow-out coop at the far end of the main run and another 4’ x 8’ coop sitting in the netting area. My main laying/breeding flock is one rooster with 6 to 8 hens. Currently I have 1 rooster, 6 hens and 2 POL pullets.

Last spring I brought in 18 cockerels with no pullets and raised them with the main flock to decide which would be this year’s flock master. I started putting the rejects in the freezer at 18 weeks and made my final decision and went to just one cockerel at 25 weeks. So one rooster, one fairly developed cockerel, and seven hens at that point.

A later hatch gave me 2 pullets and 7 cockerels that grew up with the flock. Those cockerels all made it to the freezer at about 25 weeks so I had the one rooster, the older cockerel, six hens at that time, plus the two pullets and 7 cockerels.

The previous year an incubator hatch gave me 14 pullets and 7 cockerels that were treated the same as the above. It varies tremendously year by year and by time of year, but the main flock is 1 adult rooster and 6 to 8 hens in a lot of room.

Since I moved here and got chickens in 2008 I’ve had three barebacked hens. I ate them and the problem went away. Yes, that reduced the hen to rooster ratio but the other hens did not develop bare backs. Their offspring did not either. When I have a problem I try to determine if it is a flock problem or an individual chicken problem before I treat the problem. I determined that was an individual chicken problem, brittle feathers in the hens probably because of a genetic inability to properly process certain nutrients, and removed the individuals in question before they could breed. It reoccurred once when I brought in a new rooster for genetic diversity.

I try to keep one dominant rooster with the flock at all times. When the cockerels mature to the point they start bothering the hens, the hens just run to the rooster. He sorts things out. I occasionally see a little feather loss in some of the hens but nothing approaching bare back status.

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