Batch culling vs perpetual harvest

[Ridgerunner]

I was thinking I need to segregate a rooster and hens of the same breed so I could prevent mixing of breeds, since I was planning on having 2 or 3 breeds. I don't want a PBR cock breeding with an Orp hen, or do I?

Why not? What is the downside? The chickens don’t care. There are reasons to keep birds pure, such as if you are going to show them or if you are going to sell chicks. But if you are going to eat them and use the eggs, what does it matter if they are purebreds? I'm serious? What are your reasons? If you let us know your thinking, we can discuss it.

I grew up on a farm where we depended of our chickens for eggs and meat for a family with five kids. Our chickens were not purebreds by a long shot. If you select your breeders for the traits you want, such as hatch the eggs from the hens that lay eggs and eat your smaller roosters and let the big ones breed, you can develop a flock that might suit your needs.

Plus, I was thinking having fertilized eggs layed in a different place would make identification and seperation for basket or incubator easier.

There is nothing wrong with eating fertilized eggs. Practically everyone that grew up on a farm with a flock of free ranging chickens ate fertilized eggs.

I like your idea about building bigger to start, but I was thinking about building additional coops as my flock grows. I know its twice the work to build 2 small instead of 1 big, but I have enough land to support many coops and fenced yards.

You can do it any way you want. Adding more buildings will increase the amount of places you have to take feed and water, so that goes back to your original post about extra work. You will be doing more work and you might have to carry that heavy water further. On the other hand, you add to your flexibility in managing them if you have extra space. I have a second smaller coop that also opens into my run and my run is set up that I can close a gate and section off a piece for that second coop or just leave it all open. That second coop is my grow-out pen, but it can be used for other things. Flexibility.

Smiles-N-Sunshine mentioned keeping them in a very small coop for the number of birds where they free range all day. People do that successfully all the time, but there are some restrictions on that. You need for the chickens to be able to free range all day every day. You can’t leave them locked in there for long periods of time. You have to have weather or conditions where they can get outside. If you go on vacation, you need to find someone willing to get up at daybreak to let them out if they are locked up at night. Some people don't lock them up at night or keep them inside electric netting or build a predator-proof run. Not everyone locks them up at night so they don't need the coop space.

Chickens need a certain amount of space. Whether you provide that space in a coop, coop and run, coop and free range, or just free range and let them sleep in trees depends on your circumstances and management techniques.

 

[mandelyn]

I plan on doing this with my ducks, since I can't have a rooster for the hens where we live. My reason is because of the mess ducklings make, a large batch is just so much work, I'd rather have 5 at a time than 25. Continual mess that is manageable, or a nightmare of a mess lasting several weeks. It costs $12 to have a duck processed here, while chickens are only $2.75. I chose a rare dual purpose breed so that the value of the duck alive is more then the fee to process them. Then I can eat "free". Every 1 duck sold is a processing fee or bag of commercial feed. So, the plan is to hatch twice as many as I need to keep.

Now if I was going to do the same with chickens, I would go through the expense of starting a flock of Cream Legbars, and have only them. Maybe some Marans for fun with an EE roo to make Olive Eggers. With the Legbars, they are a pure breed that is sex linked. Chicks will show their gender by color on hatch day. I can plan for the future easily and fast, and sell extras for more per chick than other sex links because of their rarity. They cost the same to feed and house, may as well choose a type that's valuable compared to others.

Keep the boys for the table and some girls to add to the layer group twice per year. Sell all the other females, that will pay for feed and processing. A male too if requested. With "out sourcing" the culling, you don't have to buy all the equipment and it's a lot more efficient. You should process some birds yourself before deciding which way you want to go. I get traumatized by it and high nightmares the night after, and so I will pay for it. Plus it takes me an hour to pluck one chicken. My great grandma did it every Sunday by hand. I won't.

It's going to be a lot of work, having one breed reduces it some. You will still need several pens and coops for this rotational grow out period. You can't put the hatched babies with adults, they'll try and kill them. You can't mix ages on the chicks until they're old enough to fend for themselves. Just hatched cannot go in with 4 week olds. 8 week olds cannot go in with 4 week olds, the size difference is too great. You would need brooders lined up like rabbit hutches, and then a large pen to finish them out in, no bird in it younger than 4 months of age. A lot of juggling. With sex linked babies, whether they're from Legbars or barred hens with a red rooster, knowing gender early and selling extra girls for profit will make the juggling easier and more cost effective.

One big batch for the freezer means one big brooder and one big pen. As soon as you start staggering it, you need to stagger the housing too.

Hatch day is incredibly fun. Don't be surprised if you find yourself hatching more than you could ever eat... choosing a marketable breed to sell is a good plan for when "chicken math" sets in.