Advice Needed:)

[CircusMum]

I have a flock of Rhode Island Reds. They’re very docile and handle Wisconsin weather extremes without a problem. I don’t know if it’s the breed or whether my girls would rather be out doing other things, but I’ve never had one go broody.

 

[Chickenproject101]

My climate is has hot summers with temperatures reaching to 105 some days and winters dropping to 10 some days. I though about production type birds but I am concerned about flightiness considering I will need to catch them everyday. I want a super friendly bird for that reason. Easter Eggers genetic similarities depend on which hatchery they are purchased from and after hearing peoples own experiences they are not a viable option, due to the need for consistency among the two groups.

I am not concerned about the two groups foraging because this project is designed to mirror a common backyard flock, which are almost never confined in my area. The feeds I have found are the closest in nutrition on the market, with one using plant protein, and the other using animal by-products such as pork fat and others. The variable is this animal by product and so foraging for insects, rodents, and other things will not skew results.

Having two coops and runs is not as cost efficient as I would like so I would like to come up with some way to divide them for feeding. I like the idea of leg banding to accomplish this.

 

[PirateGirl]

This feed comparison chart from @Texas Kiki could be helpful for you as well.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1upDVFXEQPK8PUIF6Sj3Bt5CUQfX1PlTEhg799sDT-qM/edit#gid=0

 

[Mrs. K]

I have an 8x4, with 15 head in it, 5 young birds are going on 4 months, and I am developing crowding issues. I would think you need to keep them separate, all day and all night. And a bigger coop than you are proposing, but not a lot bigger. 6 x 8 should get you through. You could have two doors, and use chicken wire to split the inside into two.

I agree with the production reds, they are quick to lay, fast growers, and consistently so. As far as handling, one could do it at night, when they have gone to roost. One could get black sex links and red sex links, and have a quick visual separation of the flocks. Sometimes birds of one color tend to hang together but not always.

When people talk about free range, they mean very different things, from the basic back yard, to the south 20 acres. Those different places have different predators. If you are in town, with a traditional back yard, neighbor dogs are apt to be your biggest threat, especially if your birds get out. Sometimes hawks.

Out in a rural situation - coons, hawks, eagles, coyotes in my country are my biggest threats and they can be serious, but regardless of your situation, a predator attack can wipe you out, or seriously interfere with the experiments results.

In a science experiment, one want to keep all the controls consistent, so one can test the variable. In a biological experiment, the individual chickens are going to have a great deal of variability within each bird. What I would hypothesize is that you are going to have different birds make different gains, and lay at a different age...in both groups. While a flock of 14 seems like a large flock to you, it is not really big enough to make conclusive conclusion. It is not enough data. If you had at least 100 birds in each group, then your results might be more conclusive.

If this is a school project, it might easily fit the requirements of the class, and the results will be interesting, but probably not as clear cut as you are hoping.

Mrs K

I think that if you build a coop, and divide it as I suggested, and then build small feeding areas outside of each door. Mark your birds, let them out in the morning into this small area - feed only enough to consume in 30 minutes, and then let them out together. They MIGHT return to their side in the late afternoon, to be fed again. And the few that get it wrong, could be caught and put back to "their" side.

Otherwise, it is going to be nearly impossible to keep apart

 

[Chickenproject101]

Yeah I agree that the results will not be super clean cut but obviously I cant keep that many birds lol. I like the idea of using two different colors of sex links in each group. Are they genetically the same except color though? Will they grow and produce at the same rate? My yard is just under an acre so I would rather not build two huge runs and instead separate the coop. I will probably end up only implementing data of five in each group to make sure if I lose some from shipping, predators, or disease I will have two extra in each group. Maybe even three extra if I get 16.