We got day old chicks about ten weeks ago from a local hobby farmer who has a large backyard flock. Because we knew we would be taking a risk with straight run, we got ten chicks. At eight weeks we had four extremely obvious cockerels, so they went back to the hobby farmer as she had offered to take back any boys. We built a coop and run to give plenty of space for six hens if we were lucky enough to get that many, or to provide room for flock growth if not.
It seems over the past few days that many of the remaining six are showing signs they are also cockerels. We may have as few as two hens, with a big coop and run to share.
My question is this- what now? We are new to all of this and I am reluctant to restart the whole chick raising process. We would like to have at least 3-4 hens, but buying hens and introducing them to the existing chicks (even at maturity) can be met with very difficult results as far as I understand.
I'm not quite sure where to go from here. Also- those are pretty bad odds, right????
Advice?
TIA
It seems over the past few days that many of the remaining six are showing signs they are also cockerels. We may have as few as two hens, with a big coop and run to share.
My question is this- what now? We are new to all of this and I am reluctant to restart the whole chick raising process. We would like to have at least 3-4 hens, but buying hens and introducing them to the existing chicks (even at maturity) can be met with very difficult results as far as I understand.
I'm not quite sure where to go from here. Also- those are pretty bad odds, right????
Advice?
TIA