How to keep extra roosters?

[pennyJo1960]

On the subject of egg layers. I am quite new.
How many eggs per day do chickens lay? I was under the impression that they laid 2 eggs per hen, per day. Is this correct, or did someone misinform me?

My Leghorns are 1 year old now. They lay 1 egg per hen, per day. Mind you, only 2 of my girls missed a couple of days, when it got down to -40C. But no multiple egg layers. Is it because they only do that when they are older?

Is there a secret to it? Getting more than 1 egg per chicken per day?

They are not hiding them. Their yard is an acre, and is fenced. To discourage the neighbor's dog.

The roosters have their own accommodations.

2 a day is rare for most any chicken

 

[MeepBeep]

On the subject of egg layers. I am quite new.
How many eggs per day do chickens lay? I was under the impression that they laid 2 eggs per hen, per day. Is this correct, or did someone misinform me?

One egg approximately every 25 hours assuming they get the required 14-16 hours of daylight... But, there will be times they don't lay every day...

Two eggs from a single hen in a day is very, very, very rare...

 

[StrawberryMoon]

@Mrs. K thank you for the insights! I like the idea of having some mature hens around to help train the young cockerels. As for space, I have 10 acres of my own, and I'm pretty much surrounded by corn fields and woods, so they will have significant ranging space. I haven't built the coop yet, so it can be any size. How many sqft per hen, how many sqft per rooster do you suggest? Assuming the hens and roosters live in separate coops, how far away do those coops need to be from one another to keep the roosters calm? Can they go out to free range at the same time and sleep separately,or should I alternate days so they are always separate?

@bobbi-j Thanks for sharing your story. It sounds like your flock did well once you moved your roosters to their own coop. Is that correct?

 

[Peekin In]

I ordered m chicks online, at the time of ordering I requested only one rooster, that is my cochin boy to go with my cochin girl. We received an extra 'bonus bird' which turned out to be a Barred Rock Roo and 6 "fillers" which looked at the start to be leghorns but have turned out to be (we think) sexlink Roo's. We lost one so we only have 5 they live in the batchelor pound and are bound for camp Kenmore (our freezer)
Of the other birds I ordered one of the Speckled Sussex turned out to be a Roo, so now I have 3 Roo's in my main coop and 12 pullets. Fights are beginning to break out among the 3 fellas. Do you think they will settle down once a pecking order is formed or am I looking at adding another to my freezer camp list ?

 

[Mrs. K]

I am a rancher with thousands of acres. However, chickens do not use all of the acres. Some breeds will be more independent, some will seldom get far from the coop/run, although the more you let them out, the farther they will go over time. 10 acres are going to have plenty of predators, and everything likes chicken. That can be kind of ugly too. My bachelor pen was not a life long pen, they stayed there for about 5 months. They were out of sight of the main coop, but not out of hearing. Crowing contests can be rather entertaining IF the coops are a great distance from the house.

I did not let my roosters free range, I wanted them a little bit fat and tender, and I did not want anything else to eat them.

Mrs K

 

[bobbi-j]

Tonight I witnessed a younger cockerel get schooled by an older hen. He's "at that age" and feeling frisky, so he jumped and was quite rough when grabbing her neck - twisting his head like he was trying to pull out feathers. He got done, and she removed a mouthful of his tail feathers!

(If a chicken can be offended, she appeared to be quite so by this brazen young bird.)

 

[Sherol]

@Mrs. K thank you for the insights! I like the idea of having some mature hens around to help train the young cockerels. As for space, I have 10 acres of my own, and I'm pretty much surrounded by corn fields and woods, so they will have significant ranging space. I haven't built the coop yet, so it can be any size. How many sqft per hen, how many sqft per rooster do you suggest? Assuming the hens and roosters live in separate coops, how far away do those coops need to be from one another to keep the roosters calm? Can they go out to free range at the same time and sleep separately,or should I alternate days so they are always separate?

@bobbi-j Thanks for sharing your story. It sounds like your flock did well once you moved your roosters to their own coop. Is that correct?

Totally agree. Same happened to me when I ordered 14 hens and 1 rooster and ended up with 12 hens and 5 roosters being sent. The flock was a mad house. Butchered 3 of the boys and have 2 roosters now. I have some 12 week olds I hatched from this flock and am starting to add the young pullets into the flock. Will pick 2 young cockerels from the new group and the rest of the youngsters and two I currently have are headed for the freezer. I hope to have a little better ratio of boys to girls as thinking will have 18 girls to the two boys. Those extra roostes took the fun out of my chickens for a few weeks till I removed them. got unsafe for me too.

 

[Peekin In]

We are removing the barred rock first, then will watch to see how the flock does. I do eat chicken and have no problem culling the roo's to fill the freezer ... hubby might take a little more convincing, they follow him around like the pied piper :\

 

[gypc84]

Can you keep a bachelor pen of various breeds of rooster, that you can seperate into other pens when you want chicks out of your hens? With the goats we have 3 bucks, they stay in a pen all year till breeding season then they are put in other pens with their does and later put back in the buck pen. Will roosters still fight even if they can't see the hens until they are ready to breed?

 

[Folly's place]

Some will want to kill each other, and some will be fine. The answer is "It depends". Mary