Sorry to hear she passed. Was hoping she wouldn't.
Sorry I didn't reply sooner, I was offline until this morning. Not that anything I said would have helped. The struggling as they die happens to some, not all. Not sure why. You did your best, I wish I had a better answer for you, but I don't doubt you'll learn more in future. I hope I do too.
She lasted a fair while. I think some aspects of the treatment were working, now it's just finding the rest of the puzzle... Hopefully before that next crops up again. It's rare, at least.
I wish I could autopsy her, sorry! Man, I'd be thorough... Wish I had been before.
About your post before Wilma passed:
Also, I have never, ever seen her exhibit the type of behavior that she did; and after she laid, she no longer was interested in getting in my lap. Today she is coming around a little but not very intensely (yet). Now that she laid, will she still seek my affection beforehand? We'll see. It was around 3pm that she laid yesterday. I hope she does lay again today, I know they can take a while to get started.
She should retain the friendly attitude but may not feel the need to 'mate' with you again, (lol), since it only takes one proper mating to fertilize a few eggs. Mostly though they mate a lot so expect it again if that's what she thinks you're doing.
I could keep them all inside their coop to force them to lay in there, but then they don't have access to grass or as many insects..
Forgot to say: best to do that during the first lays, I do it sometimes, depending on the amount of instinct they show. If they lay their first few eggs in a cage their instinct usually leads them back there afterwards. For a few days it may be best to lock them up. Once they lay elsewhere they can get pretty ornery about laying in a cage. You'll be feeding predators in a worst case scenario. Also this trait breeds fairly true, a maverick hen's daughters can often be the same.
Salmon Faverolles
I absolutely LOVE this breed. I don't know what it is. I would love to keep the breed alive in a pure bred form, but I also want to breed the traits of this bird (feather feet, beard) into my other breeds. They also have 5 toes, which would be a fun gene to experiment with. Would want to get a good roo of this one for sure.
They're really good, worth getting, same as a few of the other breeds you're keen on. I don't have experience with them all. I hope to get more, but only so I can cross them into my other birds. Sometime in future I think I might also keep purebreds, but I'd use the second class ones in my mixed flock.
The five-toe gene can go all over the place. I ended up with some birds that had four toes with a double sized hind toe that had a double claw joined with an indent down the middle; but many of my other birds showed many variations of toe position etc that I culled for. The most defective leg genetics I've brought in came with my most fertile rooster, whom all the ladies loved, who had five toes, silkie mix genes, and bred many beautiful but frequently faulty offspring. Wish I knew what to look for before I got him, lol...
The breeds you've nominated are all pretty good. Best wishes with that. It's the most recent breeder that guarantees the bird's natures, productivity, etc, not the breed. One person can take a good breed and in few short generations turn it into a waste of time. But it's the strain, not the breed; the breeder of the last five generations on average.
They are all dual purpose layer/meat birds, laying brown eggs. I would get 5 of each breed, 4 pullets and 1 cockrel. She also has silkies and I really want to get one as a pet. :X That would be 20 total, which I would raise and choose the best/favorites from. Then I would either re-home (sell on craigslist) or cull the ones that didn't make the cut, keeping about 10? I know that a flock of 10 can only support 1 rooster. I'm not sure how to handle that situation. If I wanted to keep 2 roos, I might need to keep all 20 birds.. I'm trying to wrap my head around the breeding and how it works. I want to keep roos so I can distribute their genes. Maybe I pen them in a separate roo-only cage, and do very controlled breeding in a 3rd cage? I don't know.. maybe there is 1 main roo with the flock and 1 pen of extra roos. Is that cruel?
Why do you want to keep it down to 10? Is it space related?
If you breed even one hen at a time, you will end up with an average of 10 chooks, who will take 6 months average before you can start eating them or definitively know which to keep, so you're going to have 20 birds minimum anyway.... It could take a long time for each hen to get her turn to breed, and you could lose roosters/hens before you've properly utilized their genes.
With caging to breed temporarily, it's worth doing if you've got decent boys who won't kill the caged rooster once he's released back into common population. Some birds, hens and roosters alike, can take a severe dislike to a bird that vanishes for even a few days then comes back. I treat this attitude with culling if it's bad enough because hens must vanish to brood. Roosters must be respectful enough in their battles to not kill, otherwise they're a waste of effort and resources.
About how many hens it takes to support a rooster, one per rooster is really the minimum, but people tend to keep roosters who don't mind being brutal to hens and violent to other roosters, so they cull other roos and give the remaining one more hens to try to sate their vicious appetites. Despite this, there is almost always one hen in particular who is defeathered by that rooster. It doesn't matter how many hens you give him. Some roosters are the equivalent of misogynists, they attack the hen while mating or are deliberately damaging and abusive, not caring about her protests or pain. This is totally aberrant too; damaging a female is a directly counter-productive trait that lessens the chance of that male obtaining offspring... Unless they're domestic. Then humans enable breeding of a male who should be culled. The male's attitude to females is highly heritable. You'll probably be surprised if you get a good rooster and see how careful he is with hens and chicks.
I only breed roosters who show consideration and respect to the hens, and this allows me to keep a much higher ratio of roosters per hen. (50:50 at times). In the old breed books 5 hens were more likely to be recommended because with 10, the average rooster can't actually fertilize that many eggs reliably. He'll keep mating when he's got nothing though. I suspect sperm motility and morphology is at an all time low for commercial chooks. Some roosters make life miserable for other chooks and humans; they should be culled.
The real answer as to how many roosters you can keep per hen is that it all depends on the roosters.
This means it all depends on the breeder. If you breed antisocial, violent, abusive roosters, you'll be limited.
You can keep a cage of all roosters. You can also keep a flock of 100 hens and one rooster, and there is every chance he will kill any other rooster you try to introduce, because he will have learned intolerance. You can keep one rooster per hen, or one per three hens, or whatever... It depends entirely on the roosters. If you keep one who kills others, then you can't keep more. You will be limited by the nature of the rooster you choose to keep. In my experience I found even the more tolerant boys became less tolerant if the number of roosters dropped too low; for the sake of breeding tolerant and gentle roosters, I have to keep the population pretty high, which works fine for me.
Anyway, best wishes, sorry about Wilma. Hopefully in future we will know what that was.
