"Araucana people" - would like your opinions please!

[fancyfowl4ever]

I have my hens in a roo free pen during breeding season(or whenever I want to hatch anything), so all the eggs are infertile.

If I want fertile eggs I pick out the hen and roo I want to mate an put them in their own enclosure for a couple hours to a day, then return her to her girl flock and him to the batchelor pad and only collect her eggs until she starts laying infertile eggs.

Learned this method from an old breeder, he had a shed that housed around 50 roosters of different breeds, and then he had a barn with about 120 hens(at least 2 hens of each breed) and if he wanted to hatch a particular breed he just put the pair/trio together in a cage for a day or two and only collect the eggs of the hen/s for a couple of weeks.

That way I don't need 17 + breeding pens.

You just need to know who lays what, if all else fails I will put, say, all my white egg layers with their roos and have a white egg hatching phase or something.

Good method for anyone who lacks space for more enclosures.......(we have 180 acres but my parents wont allow me to build any new pens or take over any of the old buildings....).

 

[amazondoc]

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh.

That sounds way too intelligent!

 

[wilds of pa]

Well I'm not to sure every roo is gonna do it in that time, you may wanna keep breeding pairs together a bit longer.. I'm sure it does happen, but i can tell you from experience some of my hens will cock fight a roo till she is used to him..My araucana hens are very bold.

i just put three hens with a new araucana roo two days ago and let me tell you those three hens don't give it up to easily, i watched them yesterday for awhile and that roo still hasnt breed, o he wants to but the hens just aren't ready for him yet and start to fight a bit, no blood, just saying hey i don't know you well enough yet..He does offer treats to them which is a start for him.

in fact Ive watch this happen many times and sometimes it can take awhile before the roo is gonna get lucky..

Then on top of it all, depends on if your araucana have alot of hard feather or soft feather, you may have to pluck if the birds cant mate easily, for me Ive been breeding away from this problem for a few years now...I like our chickens to be able to mate naturally

Best of luck

Charlie