Can I do two flocks, hens only and roosters only with the occasional mating?

[Redoubt Renee]

First of all, really sorry if this was answered somewhere, I did lots of search combinations to find my answer but came up dry. Second, I don't actually have chickens yet. I have a friend who is going to rent me a section of her property and the answer to this question might help me with my layout/number of the pens.

Now don't worry, I'm not going to start out with this scenario, I'm just a bit anal about planning stuff, I'm getting ahead of myself. I will probably start out with 6-10 hens, no rooster and then develop the flock if I can prove to myself that I won't kill them all accidentally.

I've ready that it works at times to have a group of just roosters and of course hens are just fine without a rooster. My question is this: I want to have a fairly small operation but still be able to breed true with 4 breeds. I'm wanting egg and meat production, so I was looking into the idea of having a pen for cockerels/roosters and the other for pullets/hens. When I want to have pure bred chicks, I would have a smaller pen for breeding.

Ok, am I nuts? Would it work? Is it a stupid idea? If the breeds matter, I'm wanting to breed Lavendar Orpingtons, Australorps, Silver-laced Wyandotte and Rhode Island Reds. I will want to also have White Leghorn Hens(to cross for Austra Whites), Buff Orpingtons and Barred Rocks eventually.

 

[Ridgerunner]

You are not nuts. A nut would not be smart enough to ask the questions.

People manage their breeding flocks like that, using bachelor pads and mating specific roosters with specific hens, moving them to and from breeding pens. You will sometimes get some pecking order adjustments when they go back to the main coops but it’s usually not that bad.

The problem is I don’t see how you can have that many different breeds and keep it a small operation. I know people use line breeding and other forms of inbreeding to develop show quality chickens and all chicken breeds were developed by inbreeding. But the risk to this is that they can become too inbred. You lose too much genetic diversity. Breeders have developed techniques like spiral breeding to maintain a certain level of genetic diversity. With spiral breeding you need three separate flocks to rotate the roosters and hens that mate in a specific sequence. You can still house them the way you are talking about but you have to keep them marked and keep very good records to know which roosters and hens to put together. As an absolute minimum you would need to keep three mating pairs of each breed if you use spiral breeding. With four breeds that’s twelve different “flocks” or 24 chickens total and you don’t have any spares if something happens to one of them. Trust me, things do happen.

You’d also need several breeding pens, not just one. That’s a lot of record-keeping and not really a small operation. You are going to need more facilities for breeding and raising them than you might think.

If you are set on having only purebred chickens try it with just one breed first to see how it goes. Gain some experience with it and go from there. I know some people on this forum strongly recommend that you have a hen-only flock to start with but I didn’t do that and a whole lot of people don’t. Most of us manage without disaster. If you are intent on breeding chickens you need a rooster.

Good luck!

 

[collie1470]

A split flock is the way we're doing it. But we're caponizing non-breeding cockerels. The capons will be seperate from the hens and breeding roo(s), because they tend to get picked on by both, it seems.

Crossing will be happening eventually, to get the perfect (as close to perfect, anyway) birds for what we want. For now I'm just glad I make a hobby out of studying genetics.

But for multiple breeds that you want crossed in certain ways, I feel like a lot more seperation is in order, to ensure no accidental crosses happen.

 

[collie1470]

You can also replace breeding roos with ones from different lines to help combat inbreeding, yeah?

 

[Mrs. K]

A way of cheating so to speak, is if you can tell the breed of the hen, by the color of the egg. It might take some careful watching, but you can generally figure out which eggs go to which hen, especially if they are many different breeds.

Then put the rooster of the breed that you want, and only hatch the eggs of the breed you want, eat the other eggs.

What I would suggest is getting a mixed flock as you have suggested, and ONE rooster of your first breed. Hatch those eggs, maybe a couple of times. Then later get a rooster of a different breed, and breed those. In two years, you should have some pure birds of both breeds.

But what you are proposing is complex, and while something to aim for, may be a bit overwhelming to start with.

In my opinion, it would be good to build a good set up/ something big enough for 20 birds. Set up the original building and run so that you can split them apart or run them all together, depending on your needs. Then gradually grow into it.

I agree with the above, it would be very difficult to keep this a small operation. I am thinking a minimum of 20 birds would be needed, that would be 2 hens and a roo of each. However, when you hatch chicks there would be a lot more birds in the set up.

Space and overcrowding is the BIGGEST problem cause in chickens, Generally speaking, build it as big as you can afford, calcualte the number of birds, start with less than that, so you can add chicks later.

Mrs K