Roosters and hens not doing what roosters and hens should do

[keket369]

So my roommate and I have a little flock of silkies and we just decided to add some more roosters because our fertility rates have been low (One rooster over ten hens). We ended up with two pretty black boys with gorgeous beards and we seperated four or five hens and put them in with them. It's been about a week and they're like middle schoolers at a dance--Re: they stay on opposite sides of the pen not even looking at each other. Now, the first couple of days, these roosters were crowing and doing their dance, but now they just stay huddled in the corner farthest from the original roo's pen. The hens have just sat next to the gate, pining. This morning we put up a tarp between them, hoping a visual barrier would get their minds off him, but we've been unsuccessful thus far.

tl;dr, our roosters aren't doing their job, what do we do?

 

[Pyxis]

Before you separated them from their original rooster, had you tried trimming everyone's butt fluff? Sometimes their fluff prevents a successful mating and that can cause the low fertility rate. I'm not sure what to do about the new boys ignoring the hens, sorry

 

[keket369]

We trimmed down one at the beginning of the season, but she was the fluffiest by far. Like, it took some serious searching to find a cloaca on her. None of the others had any such problems.