Breeding

[IloveBuffy]

I have two questions about breeding.
1. One of our roosters, Percy, keeps breeding with this one hen, Shelly, about 12 times that I've seen. Her neck feathers are almost gone now. How do I stop him?

2. One of our Australorp hens keeps wanting to sit on eggs. It has happened 4 times this year, and I cant break her from it once she gets going. I don't know she's gone to try and hatch until the day after. She pecks me when I try to get her off the eggs. 3 of the times the eggs weren't even fertile, and the 4th time she was sitting on a golf ball. How do I stop her?

 

[NYREDS]

1. The only way to stop him is to seperate them. You have too many males: with 12 females you don't need 4 males. if you reduce the number of males the hen you're concerned about will receive less attention.

2. When she starts to go broody move her to a wire bottomed cage. In a few days she'll stop.

 

[IloveBuffy]

OK. We will be getting rid of one or two of them soon-ish, but Percy won't breed with anyone else.

 

[cluckcluckluke]

1 ) I think you'll find that when you move your other roosters out that Percy will start breeding with the other hens. The other rooster would have probably been more dominant and Percy only had that one poor hen to mate with.

You could try taking the hen in question away from the flock for a couple days and when she comes back Percy will have a few more favs.
But yes, to many roos.

2 ) x2 with NYREDS.

 

[IloveBuffy]

OK, but Percy is the dominant rooster, and Shelly seems to be really popular with the other 3 roosters too.

 

[cluckcluckluke]

Just move on some roosters then see if anything changes and go from there.