Breeding technique and Organising......

MWSIFarm

Chirping
Feb 22, 2022
49
171
99
Western AUS. SW Region
Hi all,

A few months ago we had our first successful hatching in our flock of silkies, Im not really pushing hard for success and just letting the hens do what they want, we hatched every egg and had 15 chicks, unfortunately I learn a harsh lesson is how these little ones can be wee Hodini's and a lot of them escaped the coop and were picked off by birds of prey etc. We ended up with 4 making it, they are all girls, so my lack of experience some what saved me a dirty job later.........

Our coop and run are more than big enough for about 15-20 birds, we have 9 hens and our Rooster (Vincent). I want to hatch another lot to boost our numbers but I don't want them bred from Vincent's daughters, I have read that 1 level of interbreeding is ok but I still don't like the idea and am going to have to work out solution one day, my question is about picking which hens eggs you want to hatch, If ive learnt correctly after the hen has been bred with she is fertile for 10 days or so? Does this mean I can make a "Breeding Pen" which is seperate to the rest of the coop and run and just pop a couple of the hens in there and let them lay and brood?

Do I need to have the hens and roosters separated? I wouldn't have thought this was a good idea, one rooster with just a couple of hens might get hectic. Or do I need to seperate the 4 children birds until a hen has laid a clutch and started sitting?

Open to all ideas, thanks in advance.
 
More like 3-4 weeks.
So if you want to hatch from a certain male, the females need to be kept separate from all other males but him for that long.
We only have the one rooster, so if I see him breed a hen that I want to have eggs from, I can just seperate her and leave her in her own area for what would end up a few months, enough time to lay a clutch and hatch them?
 
We only have the one rooster, so if I see him breed a hen that I want to have eggs from, I can just seperate her and leave her in her own area for what would end up a few months, enough time to lay a clutch and hatch them?
Then just leave him in with all the girls.
You might want to confine a particluar hen to gather her eggs for hatching,
but no guarantee who will go broody to hatch.
 
While Silkies "can" go broody a lot, you cannot control "when" they will. I'd leave them all together until one goes broody, then separate out the four pullets and start collecting eggs from the others. With 9 hens that should not take long (though the broody one won't be laying), then give them all to her at the same time so they start together.

If you want to leave eggs in the nest to see if that will encourage one to go broody, I'd leave golf balls, not real eggs. I've tried that (both golf balls and real marked eggs) in a flock that the hens often go broody and it never did work but you might have better luck. I like to set fresh eggs instead of some that may have been around for weeks.
 

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